Backtracking

Retracing our footsteps does not always mean reliving the past

Photo by Kevin Bluer on Unsplash

“Best of all,” she snarled,
“It means I’ll be leaving
this dump of a town.”

Decades later, upon returning,
she spoke softly,
choking back tears:
“It’s good to be home.”

That’s how it is with youth,
brash and audacious early on,
wiser once the certainty fades,
wiser still when it relaxes
into the changing pace of the journey.

Time ticks and time tocks
with or without clocks,
and the painful parade of wasted yesterdays
magically takes form as unwritten tomorrows
brimming with the possibility of presence.

We all go home again,
some of us with more time to spare than others.

More poems by this author: