Foreseeing

Middle age refers more

to landscape than to time:

it’s as if you’d reached

the top of a hill

and could see all the way

to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt

that it has an end—

not that it will have,

but that it does have,

if only in outline—

so for the first time

you can see your life whole,

beginning and end not far

from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—

the view makes you weep,

but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth

seen from space: you can’t help

but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it’s simple

to re-enter whenever you choose,

lying down in your life,

waking up to it

just as you always have—

except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,

as your own words

coming back to you

define the landscape,

remind you that it won’t go on

like this forever.

(c) Sharon Bryan

 

Where are you in the journey of your life? Describe what you can see from there.
If your life was a landscape, what kind of landscape would it be? Would it be fluid like a river, or deep like an ocean? Would it be a desert or a forest? Let your imagination lead the way.
Begin a poem with the words, “From where I stand…”

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