Evening Walk

Even though we’re walking down the same road
  and it comes out the same place,
  we cast unique shadows beneath the evening sun.
We’ll never walk… the same road.

Aware of the sun’s rapid setting,
   I take baby steps to slow it down,
   to savor flashbacks of days when,
   high overhead,
   it cast wriggling shadows
   of my sons tussling in the yard with friends.

Now they’ve followed the sun
   to a faraway coast…
   the yard where they played belongs to another.

And when I came home physically,
   memories alone lighting my way,
   I was searching for deeper, 
   impossible
   paths of return.

 

This poem emerged from an assignment for our poetry group. We were given some verses from a Native American poem and challenged to use them somehow in a poem:

Even though we’re walking down the same road and it comes out the same place,
We’ll never walk… the same road.

And when I came home physically, I was searching for deeper,  paths of return.