The way is not so wild and free
that you walk independently
or win victory alone.
You may travel without a clue
of who or what walks next to you,
there through all that you have known.
You cannot split yourself away –
when other leaves, you cannot stay.
Life plays and grows between you.
Each breath keeps both of you alive
from birth to death. The whole survives;
it thrives, if you mean it to.
12 MAY 2025
Leave a CommentSometimes, I wonder: if I’d walked a different path,
the one, like Frost’s, well-traveled and defined,
perhaps more suited to my demograph
but nonetheless a road that I declined,
and put my energy into some goal,
a measure pleasing to the status quo,
if I pretended to have more control
of what I’ve had, and lost, or just let go,
would I have turned out more or less the same
at least as superficial means could sense
or would I be caught up in the grand game,
believing it the sole experience?
What might have been that person’s might-have-beens,
those dreams unknown to he who is me now?
Would those who live as I do seem obscene,
mere blots that for some reason gods allow?
And when I paused to think of hows and whys
in quiet moments between each new dance
would I conceive a world cut down to size
to fit my purpose providence or chance?
I ponder, sometimes, on the path I walk,
and wonder, of the two worlds, which is worse:
to see the pebble dwarfed next to the rock,
or know the rock, lost in the universe.
The knowing that I chose the darker way,
through brambles that some might have cleared to pass,
has brought me right to where I am today;
perhaps my journey hasn’t been as fast
as if I’d walked the straight and brighter trail,
but then again, there is no use for speed
when, despite all your efforts, guidebooks fail
to tell you everything your journey needs.
02 FEB 2005
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