Morro Rock still stood
proudly to the heavens in its blue bath,
and the feathered hunters,
though now several generations removed,
continued to circle nature’s landmark
in a display of the bay’s timelessness.

Yet much had changed since I last cast
my shadow on this harbor.
A birth had transformed lives,
a darkness had stolen a fragile love,
and a dream had unfolded into something
vast and unfathomable.

It is the unvisited past that hits the hardest,
the returned trips to sites we seldom frequent.
Time is measured not by days or weeks,
but by vows, promotions, heartbreaks, and deaths.
One does not have the benefit of
too many sunsets smoothing the sharp edges of memory.

Here nothing is blurred.
The past spreads open before you
with all its blemishes and imperfections,
showing a vibrant picture of where you once stood,
a youth bound for greatness, for bliss,
and where you now sit,

humbled by years,
the ice cream bleeding down your cone.
But wisdom, the slowest of waters,
flows in abundance in these rare moments.
It cascades from above, off the mountain
you’ve been ascending since days unremembered.


(c) 2013 by Vincent Lowry