A Choice of Ropes

I will admit there are times
I simply want to cut the ropes
and let the tide take me out,
let the currents move me to where ever they will.

To drift without responsibility
or expectations, and watch the riverbanks
pass silently by, the work of life
and travel abandoned.

I will admit there are times.
I am just that tired of the work
of the journey, my part of the work
of my own dance with the devil.

Let him have me, I say.

But if course I never quite let go of the last rope.
I remember. I tried that once,
not by choice as much as by fate
and my own battered weakness

leaving me unable to hold on to anything.
It did not work out well. Rivers it seems
can lead to hell as well as heaven.
I bear the scars and are grateful

that despite yourself,
I landed softly, in a land of fresh water
and sunshine. In a land with new ropes
to cling to and new landscapes to learn.

Lucky once. Enough to learn
I was not made for tides, strong enough
and wise enough to choose
the ropes I cling to
and the ones I release.

About this poem

Obscurely autobiographical.

The picture was taken at the far end of Provincetown, Mass.

Tom