Many years ago now,
in my forest of forever,
I stopped, I stood,
I looked, I dreamed,
I listened to the song
that played as the wind blew
through the trees,
I was alone but surrounded
by ancient spirits –
even though there was no other
man, woman, or child
around to be found,
I knew that I was being visited
by the ghosts of poets
and the muses of fellow dreamers –
it was as if I were communing
with my younger-self,
as well as with my future-self
and the one writing this poem:
the one who sees
and the one who believes
that every thing that happens
happens for a reason.

As I write, as I think back,
as I use the infinite sight,
as I remember all the steps
that I have taken along my path,
I am again in the woods of yesterday
and breathing in the air
and being intoxicated by the smell of pine –
I am again standing in the sunlight,
as if I have managed to leap back in time,
and I remember all that I felt
and all that walked with me
when my poetic gift was still in its infancy,
and I can know and I can remember
things that have not yet happened
but have already happened
that I have been immortalized in my poetry.

I see in my memory a land far-away;
I see the beautiful face of the one person
in the entire who is the true light of my day;
I look in front of me and I see
the man who would be me;
I turn my head and I see a boy
with blond curly-hair
who was once and will always be me;
I see an incomplete circle;
I see an unfinished masterpiece;
I see a continuously ever-changing world;
I see a shadowed version of myself
looking at me from afar
from their vantage-point
from which they can see every incarnation of me.

I cannot hold-on to my flashback for too long
before I flash-forward again;
I continue to write as if all that was
had always been just the words
that I had written by my own hand
with my own pen;
I look out of my bedroom window
and I see a floating white feather
and I am reminded of the falling leaves
that will be always frozen in time
when I return in my mind
to my forest of forever.