As If You Knew.

A long hallway, brick and aged wood,
brightly lit, pictures on the wall.
Local places mostly,
A few from foreign lands,
places, all of them, where you have traveled,
all of them strange and new once,
familiar now. Good memories,
even the ones that were not so good in the moment,

a long hallway, brick and aged wood.
You are in no hurry to finish your walk
to the dark door at the end.
You would prefer to linger here
than go through yet another door
to another land that is strange to you.
You adapt well, but it has become tiring
that adapting. You wonder how many mysteries
and their solving you have left in you.

Then, as you reach the last photograph on the wall,
you laugh at yourself, at your reticence,
at how you repeat this one bit of your history,
over and over, like an old man without a memory.

But you have a memory. It is here on these walls.
All the closed doors to strange lands you have entered
are where these pictures came from in the first place.
You straighten the last picture, still chuckling,
and walk through the dark door
as if you knew.

About this poem.

I have spent the past few months living in the midst of a good place in life, but just as strong, with a sense of change I cannot see or quantify. It’s not the first time.

Tom