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You never know what’s coming next,
around the corner, around the bend
in life’s twisted maze; there are no signs,
no rules, no lines unbroken, no guarantees,
for more is spoken than is known,
more unwoken than the mind’s eager eye -
the sigh of invisible breezes, blown fragments
of meaning, like leaf-piles scattered
as we chase our dreams, the things that
matter, the pitter-patter of love,
the flitter-fluttering dove of inner peace,
of calm in the maelstrom of motion,
our incessant becoming, our running
from the past and striving to be
different, better, elsewhere, anywhere
other than where we are, away
from the storm, the swarm of buzzing thoughts
and bustling tasks, yet no one asks:
what for and why now, why so urgent,
this need to strive, to plot and plan,
to map the stars and our orbit through
the spaces of living, the traces of dying,
the faces of who we are and who we will be -
until, at last, we are free, unvexed
by what, or who, is coming next