"Why do you walk so quickly?"
The destination is all we long to know.
But cars, boats, planes, trains –
movement is all they know
No room to celebrate life
No room to contemplate death
They go
And we are but lost souls trying to keep pace
With the mechanisms of our own invention
New waters to navigate
Changes in the tides
An infinite array of crossroads
Is what we find
An endless conveyor belt of crosses
From which we can never hide
Always something
Never nothing
To slow down for one second
Is to be one second closer
To a glorious story remaining unwritten
A dilapidated house left for good
A dandelion without a child's wish
A prayer that never escaped the lips
This humanly inhuman fascination with movement
Must
keep going, keep going, keep going, keep g–
What have we here?
Photos covered
In layers of dust
Pressed flowers
In tattered scrapbooks
Old favorite songs
On a scratched CD
Recollections
of old lovers in old cities
That lovely Nostalgia
Both a blessing and a curse
Offering us the promise of a brief respite
If only we turn around
That ever-present struggle
To shrug off the demons from the past
"Remember how good your life used to be?"
"You haven't even changed for the better."
"There is so much you're missing out on."
There will always
be those who remind us
of where we've been
And try to convince us
that we miss it
But the photos are faded
The flowers are dead
The songs are cacophonous
And lovers are turned strangers
only look ahead.
Give a small salute
to the death of sweet memories
and idealized versions of persons
existing solely in the imagination
And then go.
Keep going.
Can't stop.
Like little sharks.
"Why do you walk so quickly?"
Movement is all I can bear to know.
