Only You Hear

It is not the life you set out to create.
It is quieter. Less fame. Less fortune.
There has been more brokenness, more scars.
More loves and broken hearts than you had planned.
More work to just become yourself again,
never expecting to be an old man with a past,
or an old man with a future.
You have abandoned expectations, trading them in
for moments, fully lived
as you become unexpected

Once, you were told that you did not see time
as other people do, that you largely ignore it,
as you ignore everything that gets in your way,
living in a world others do not, yet somehow
sharing worlds in a maddening way, at times
too patient, at times, ignoring steps and good sense,
depending too much on a heart that limps along,
well worn and a bit fractured. Counting time
in beats only you hear.

About this poem

Do any of us have the life we planned? Likely not.

Tom