Every life has a beginning and an end...
every journey has a start and a finish...
every day has a message to be received
and a message to be sent...
every time you hope for the best
sometimes you get exactly what you wanted
and sometimes the reality that unfolds
in no way matches your original wish.

As I stand at the junction
at the end of one road
and at the beginning of another
I find myself looking back
over the path that I have forged
with my own words and actions
I see so many of the missteps
that I have made -
as if I could see my own footprints
as clearly as if they were made
in snow or in mud -
and I wish that I were able to
go back and change certain things,
because I realize now that for so long
I have, in a way, been trying
to hold back the water of a flood
by constantly repairing breaches
in the dams that I have constructed
to not allow the natural flow
of the poetry of life that I believe in
to change and refresh that which
sometimes needs to be renewed -
because for so long I have been held back
by emotional barriers that at times
I found it hard to contend with and understand.

Everything is finite...
night must become day,
just as day must become night...
rain falls, seas rise, rivers flow -
and no matter what is said
and what is done nature will win out,
and for every door that opens
one must close...
everything, everyone,
can only be expected
to go so far for so long
before they reach the end of a road
and they have to start upon another.