Looking Back

Writer’s Island prompt #15 “if I could change one thing”
 

I want to tell you
everything:
how it feels
when you finally
realize
that you can’t
go back,
can’t undo
anything.

Can’t unravel
skein wound soft
but tight upon
itself.
Can’t release seed
sheltered by its
need, till
it refuses to grow,
then withers
to dust, brushed
aside on passing
wind of changes.

Disappears, like
shrinking shadow
that once loomed
large on horizon,
but turned somewhere
in one blink of eye
that might last
forever,
never seen again
but always wondered
after.

Pain of old age
is not from joints
gone brittle,
or organs now weak
from too long
living,
but in the head
and heart
that finally sees,
at a side glance,
the dance of one
moment only
to speak,
to say what hasn’t
been said,
do what hasn’t
been done, to touch,
to feel the realness
of a now that must
make way
for the next,
and all that can’t
be undone
between them.

Elizabeth Crawford

Originally published 1/24/08
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