Silver Birch

He always had the feeling
that he knew where he was going,
he knew where and he knew why,
but things happened, things he couldn’t
really help but he regretted all the same,
that pulled the rug clean out from underneath him.

It was late in life to start feeling lost
but he couldn’t really help that either,
so he accepted it as best he could, it didn’t
stop him waking in the night feeling angry about it
or worrying about his future, but he accepted it.

Sometimes he had the vague notion that if
he let himself get really lost, if he surrendered
to it and didn’t fight it, he might get found again,
but in a different way, a better way, and that would
make the events that had befallen him meaningful.

But it didn’t happen, he just got used to being lost,
it became a new way of life, and as he walked around
his neighbourhood and the seasons came round
year after year, he began to make the acquaintance
of the trees and plants he passed, they became his friends.

He would nod to them as he walked by,
stop to admire them when they were in bloom
or examine the buds that had formed in late autumn,
then one spring, as he was sitting quietly on a bench,
absorbed in the gentle movements of a young birch in the
morning breeze, being lost or found didn’t matter any more.

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