The Future

(I found all these old poems. Here's another that's worth pondering about how you live you life.)

THE FUTURE

                "There is this about magic doors:
                     You pass through them unawares."
                                          --Celtic saying 

The Future is out there, obscured from sight
by the mist that flows up from the sea at dawn,
impenetrable--a fog wall closing in, narrowing
the moment down to its nub, its essence, a particle of time.

Straining to see doesn't help. Squinting is useless.
Standing on tip-toe in the ccold damp grass, vaining
trying to peer above the close, cliinging clouds,
the future undoes your hope,
unties your pleasures and aches alike,
stripping away this moment, this 'now'.

"The present", someone told me once, "is just what
you miss while you await the future". Something
like that is what they said. But I missed it then,
wondering what they would say next,
not wanting to miss that....

On this side of the future, fog is all we have
or can have, A road beneath two trees,
sweet wet grass for walking barefoot and maybe
some magic door we entered already.

jgb/2005