Perspective

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

The way ahead is a hard road

Cold and growing dim as dusk descends

Beset by sharp switchback curves

The kind that have taken more than one unwary traveler unawares

And taken from them all they have

Look at the road 

And be lost in it

In its doubts and dangers and despairs

Trepidation

Tense and wary, breath quickened as the light fades 

Traveling into darkness but dimly known

The bare branches of a red aspen the last marker

The last tendrils of color before rounding the curve into the void

Stop

Look up

The bare branches of the red aspen are a marker, yes,

But of what?

Look down, and they keep the gates of the flowing gray river

Unwinding like a ribbon,

That pulls inexorably into an unquiet future 

Eyes raised only inches, and the ribbon disappears

The bare branches of the red aspen are no longer Cerberus in willowy form

But a herald

Of light, of warmth, of a place to rest, 

Rocked in the cradle of the very earth itself

Safe beneath a blanket of sunlit clouds

Perspective

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

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Every year at this time, it's the same: An upcoming marker brings unbidden thoughts, unwelcome memories, threatening to swamp the promise of a new year in darkness before it begins.

i have to remind myself: Step back. Step forward. Look up. A path that seems dark and forbidding, beset by unquiet ghosts, is not the whole of the journey. For every ghost lying in wait, there is a countervailing ray of light.

Perspective. 

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