Over Time

Otis Redding playing in your head
as you sit in the winter sun, listening to the tide
roll out, slip away like the old year,
dropping away from the shore, away from you,
until it reaches it’s limit and returns,
a whole new ocean.

You come back from this, every time,
changed in the magic of emptying out,
falling away, making room.
it is a cycle, a deception that you lay
waiting for the same sea to return,
when it is anything but.

So leave me here a while.
There is time to wait. Time to become new.
Time to rearrange the broken pieces
into something new and surprising,
a thing you could only become
over time.

About this poem

Otis Redding of course, sang “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”

Those are my legs, taken late two falls ago.

I love New Year’s and all it represents, new starts, no matter what has gone before. I rarely actually start anew on New Year’s (It happens more randomly with me), but I love the idea that we can all begin again, on anything, at any time.

Speaking of time, reall change takes time. Be patient with yourself this year.

Tom