The Past Not Taken

This is a quirky poem I wrote sometime ago and tinkered around with the past few days. So, for what it's worth (since National Poetry Month is winding down).......



I fall back
through past chapters
of my life, slip
into a sea of change.

Fabric along the shore
feels rough and knotty and so
I pluck a thread, here
and there
a thread
to smooth the way.

And as I pull and pluck
the past flies out of kilter
slips its bounds and
slides away.

I grasp for the familiar
as, like bright balloons
set adrift
in winds of time,
they drift off and out of rhyme and place.

I have loosed the fabric of my past,
unraveled time
and space
and place,
set sail on a course
unknown and out of bounds.

There is no traveling
back
to the place
before I fell
into the muck with my need
to pluck, retouch and refine
what was mine in all its rough-hewn glory.

My story, it belonged to me,
and only me, a journey writ
one page at a time, one blank page
at a time, where one can only edit
in present and future tense.

Like drifting balloons
treasured faces of the past
sail away from tomorrow.
Frantically, I reach
for what has slipped away,
to no avail.
A new course
unwinds
before me.

I stumble
among the paths not taken,
unfamiliar vistas, unknown faces.
With a heavy heart,
like Lot’s wife spared,
I set out blindly
in a desert of regret.

~~Pam Patterson