Kat posted this recently, a favorite of mine too, and it is too good not to share:
The road not taken is taken. Beyond the bend
it stretches on in the mind, well-traveled
as the one on which we set our feet.
An untold, imagined story
mingles with memory; actual
and possible paths cross and at each crossing
we pause, not to regret, but to remember
that to choose is to keep choosing.
The after-image of a face beyond a half-open door,
the felt warmth of a room beyond an uncrossed threshold,
the lingering sounds of a conversation that never happened,
leave their record, too, on the heart and in the bones:
fourth dimension of the life we choose and live.
You can lose what you never had—
mourn the unborn child,
the unspoken confession,
the friendship foreshadowed
that drifted away on the next tide.
You can lose what you only imagined having:
evening hours sipping wine over an open book;
walks that wind beyond the routes of responsibility,
the luxury of dailiness: “Oh, it’s you again—
I wondered when you’d come.”
The good-bye hard upon hello,
the embrace that renounces even as it receives,
the same breath caught in anticipation released
in resignation, confuse the opening heart.
By a strange mercy we are allowed
to practice the final paradox—to love and let go,
learning in each release to listen to the voice
that asks, “Do you see yet?” Do you see
how to love the wave already breaking
because it is a wave?
because it breaks?
No comments:
Post a Comment