Changes

Everything changes.
I would call it a blur, but that would be a lie.
The changes are small. Tiny.
Most of them I barely notice as they happen
Tiny chips at my heart. Tiny whittlings of my soul.
A wasting away so minor I never feel it. I feel

as though I am still in a world that blurs
its way past me. And yet, looking back
years or decades back, I see a stranger
a bit like me, but not quite. A changed man
a bit in wonder at the journey. More than a bit actually.

The world blurs by. Children grow up.
Cars fall apart. Children are born and adopted.
People die, leaving bits and pieces of themselves
sprinkled over your soul. Houses burn down.
Houses are built. Half the furniture in your house
was not there five years ago. Your pain has changed,
some days more manageable. Some days, just, different.

The world blurs by. This nation of yours has become
something new. Angrier. More prone to lies.
More in need of faith, more afraid of it, even resentful
at times. Where you ask yourself, what happened
to what you thought you knew? How did we become
so adept at moving backwards to the dark?

And how, in the midst of all the evidence to the contrary
did you become a creature believing in the power
of love, no exceptions. How did you find a compassion
you barely had once. How did other’s pain
become, almost, your own?

There are dandilions in the fields this week.
Millions of them. The world is brighter for them.
Your world is brighter for them.
And in a week they will be gone, turned
to puff balls then blowing in the wind,
new seed for a new season. Invisible
as they fall to the earth and settle.

Everything changes. And in the end,
we all become more who we are.
who we were meant to be. Perhaps not yet seen,
like dandelion seeds, blowing a while
on the winds, then settling. Waiting for new season,
Our season. To bloom.
Our season, at last.

About this poem

Driving to my favorite diner this morning I reveled in the fields of dandelions in full bloom. I looked at them. I looked at myself, in wonder of all the changes over the past decade or so.

From those thoughts, this poem. Written for me. Written for people I love in the midst of changes themselves.

Tom