old snow
I’m old enough now
to feel the arc of my life rising
over the years, the shape of it
and the erosion of old certainties
beneath. when we’re young
we experience ourselves as a point
as beings out of time. but I’ve knelt
in this cathedral long enough now
to be conscious of the beads of sequential
experience clicking softly through
my fingers, this error in perception
I refer to as me. the gap
between the man in the mirror
and the man in my mind grows larger
by the day, as if some piece of me
is trying to circle back to the origin
even as the physical me noses over
and begins to accelerate toward the final
target. maybe one day I’ll come full circle
and meet the boy of my original self.
what would we say? who would be
the teacher? and who the taught?
how much might finally be forgiven?
Winter is ending at last in these mountains
but the snow lingers in the shadows
like a difficult lesson— that everything melts
but in its own time, that even old snow
can still shine, that old ice
can still be dangerous, that old fingers
can still bleed.
© oldbonesnewsnow.com/ J.A. Fink
