A Journey

If life is a journey, it may not be easy

Even near the end to say for sure

Whether I lost my way or found it.

On days when it seems I’ve failed,

I may not be certain where my error lay.

Was the furniture I lugged from the past

So heavy that my rented truck sank in the mud,

So I never made it across the isthmus

Into the promised land of the present?

Or did I bring too little with me

Into a present more empty than advertised,

With no groceries and no farms,

No berry bushes or fig trees?

And on days when it seems I’ve arrived

Where I hoped to arrive, was it a matter

Of finding one path and sticking to it

Or of trying scores of dead-end shortcuts,

Each one a detour I had to take

Before I could be at ease with the route

I would come in time to recognize as my own?

A failure because I arrived too late

At a life that a real hero would have discovered

Many decades earlier. A success because

The story of my slow progress kept me guessing.

How dull the achievement of a competent hiker

Who completes in two hours a hike

That’s supposed to take him about two hours.

How much better to meet with so many

Roadside adventures I didn’t anticipate

When I started at sunrise that I was lucky

To finish my hike by dusk.