This episode is a part of Mark’s “A Journey Through Poetry” – a personal reflection of his life as a poet, a writer, and a author – in which he recites a different poem from every one of his poetry collections. In this episode Mark recites his poem ‘Divergence’, from his poetry collection The Storyteller, and he gives some insight and some context into why he was inspired to write this poem in particular.
Divergence
The Storyteller: Divergence
“Divergence” is a poem taken from Mark’s 2025 poetry collection ‘The Storyteller‘ – now available to purchase in hardback and as an ebook from Amazon.
My Poem “Divergence”
No one knows what will happen,
and no one can know who they will meet,
no one can know who will become
important to them when their path intersects
and for a period of time
runs in parallel with the path of someone else;
however, one day, all things must change
and all things must end -
because they have to,
because they were always meant to.
We all go through stages in our lives,
and once we find ourselves at a certain point -
perhaps at the same time as someone else -
something happens that we knew
would one day happen,
but something that we somehow
made ourselves believe would never happen -
because each of us is inherently optimistic
and we want to believe that things
will continue how they have always done,
because we all mostly live in a state of hope.
Friendships, partnerships,
relationships can last for years,
before they are tested by
the arrival of something,
or perhaps someone,
and that is when things
start to change between people
and that is when the longevity
of what is being shared
starts to be called into question.
It's always sad when
we all have to say goodbye...
hours soon turn into days,
days soon turn into weeks,
weeks soon turn into months,
and months soon turn into years,
before we all realise
how much time has gone by
and how much each of us have been changed
by what we have been through;
and then we can see something,
then we can hear something,
then we can feel something,
and we are immediately transported
back in time within our mind
to memories of people and experiences
of who we once knew,
when things were different,
when things were how they used to be,
when we were how we used to be
and who we sometimes wish we still were,
and we wish we could go back
to when, where, and how
things used to be;
however, time is an arrow that can
only physically move in one direction -
but each of us relies on who we have known,
what we have done,
where we have been,
and what we have learned
from our encounters,
from our collaborations,
from what we have done -
until something happens
that throws all the pieces of a seemingly
almost complete puzzle up into the air,
and each of us must again proceed
down a new path of divergence.
Mark The Poet 