Off Color

You feel suddenly off season,
like finding leaves bright and orange
in April, or
azaleas blooming bright and fuschia
in the midst of February.
The colors are wrong,
not bad,
just wrong, suddenly changed,
like in a dream gone mad,
full of characters and landscapes,
wonderland-like,
far too bright, too vibrant, too loud
to navigate. Your maps,
cultivated and well marked
from a lifetime of travel,
are of no use here.

It is unsettling, yes,
but if you are honest
there is excitement in it,
a touch of youth
with all it’s energy and uncertainty,
with it’s sense of flagrant possibility.
Never mind your old bones
that move slow in the morning,
or your mind, suddenly one step behind
with these unexpected seasons,

You laugh at the thought
of never being quite sure, realizing
that more than likely,
you never were.

About this poem

Three of my most used software packages did major updates this weekend. As always I hated it at first, preferring to just be able to do the work rather than having to relearn. I always feel sluggish when my favorite tools become something else, just as I do when major things in my life change. And there has been a lot of change in the last year.

But you get past it, learn the new landscape of life, and ultimately revel in it’s joys…. till the next time.

Tom