2013 30 Day Image Prompt Contest Book

"Along The Way ..." (Poetry/Day 29)

Along The Way …

I picked up a book that said “History”
and found that a lot was familiar to me.
Events that I lived through, listed in succession.
I found my reaction was one of depression.

“When did I get that old?” I asked myself.
I reached for another book from the shelf.
“Go West, Young Man,” by Horace Greely,
his treatise on our manifest destiny.

I remember reading, a while ago,
about how the westward trails were so slow.
The covered wagons moving, day by day,
would leave things unwanted along the way.

The way to the west was thusly marked
by all the things deserted and parked.
A dresser, a chair, keepsakes once held tight,
now just impediments to a future bright.

I thought of my own life, what I’d left behind.
Dreams that had faded or been consigned
to a bucket list that would never be done.
The battle with time would never be won.

Friends from my past, now long out of touch.
Places and things that I loved so much
now only survive in my memory,
mere pages of writing in my history.

And yet … suddenly a thought occurred to me.
All of these things weren’t abandoned, I see.
They were roots that had nurtured me as I grew.
I had a perspective that was, to me, new.

As I sat with that book, I came to realize
that the things in my past weren’t just good-byes
but part of me now and always would be.
Along the way they had all become … me.


Day 29 – "Invalid Item" 
Prompt: Image 2 (Skeleton with Book)