Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Inquiry


Is it wrong to be so in love with coffee?
Is it wrong to add a shot of Irish Cream?
Is it wrong to not return the drug store lip gloss
that was already opened when I
handed it to the checkout lady?
I really didn’t see….
Its slick pyramid smells
of sickly sweet gardenia and as I
slide its surface across my lips I
imagine who might have torn the plastic wrapper:
A homeless woman seeking
just one ounce of glamor.
A single mother scrambling
to reach an interview.
A clutch of laughing,
purple-shadowed teens.


Is it wrong to sit here,
hail falling on gravel and skylight,
my children absent, learning of biomes and ABCs,
and absorb the stain of
someone else’s invisible longing
upon my fire- and spirit-warmed face?


- Amy Elizabeth Robinson

If You are a Man

If you are a man, and believe in the destiny of mankind
then say to yourself: we will cease to care
about property and money and mechanical devices,
and open our consciousness to the deep, mysterious life
that we are now cut off from.
The machine shall be abolished from the earth again;
it is a mistake that mankind has made;
money shall cease to be, and property shall cease to perplex
and we will find the way to immediate contact with life
and with one another.
To know the moon as we have never known
yet she is knowable.
To know a man as we have never known
a man, as never yet a man was knowable, yet still shall be.


- D.H. Lawrence

Photograph


my grandsons
spinning in their joy
universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round


- Lucille Clifton

The Fisherman


Although I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.


Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,


And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'


- William Butler Yeats

Waving Goodbye


A new suitcase in one hand,
car keys in the other and finally
off to college for the first time.

Looking back past the walnut tree
a last glance at the old house
his family still waving good-bye
good-bye from behind
the screened-in porch.

Shifting gears on Main Street,
thinking of things left behind
his old room and a medal from track
closet full of memories and old clothes
all still too good
to give away.

Homecoming for the thanksgiving feast
stunned at the barrenness of his room
just one change of socks and underwear remaining
in the top right drawer of the otherwise
empty chest.

Staring down the hallway at Christmas,
past the presents and the lighted tree
he saw his room was gone
the doorway and the door
across from his brother’s room.

At spring break under the walnut tree
staring again at the screened-in porch
he was certain
the house was gone.

Trying one last time in June
the porch was gone
the tree was gone
Main Street no where
to be found.

Driving away past his disappearing high school
he wondered was there a medal from track?
Had he ever had a brother?

Clutching the wheel in front
he knew he must hurry
his road disappearing
his town disappearing
and in the rear view mirror,
was that his life?
slowly waving
good-bye, good-bye?

- Doug von Koss

Squirrels


Something blurred, warmed
in the eye’s corner, like woodsmoke
becoming tears;
but when you turned to look


the stoop was still, the pumpkin
and tacky mum pot wouldn’t talk —
just a rattle
at the gutter and a sense


of curtains, somewhere, pulled.
Five of   them later, scarfing the oak’s
black bole,
laying a dream of snakes.


Needy and reticent
at once, these squirrels in charred November
recall, in Virgil,
what it is to feel:


moods, half-moods,
swarming, then darting loose; obscure
hunches that refuse
to speak, but still expect


in some flash of   luck
to be revealed. The less you try
to notice them,
the more they will know of  you.


- Nate Klug

The Otter and the Seaweed


This is what you need to know:
you need to know that otters wrap themselves
in seaweed so they won’t,
while sleeping at night, float out to sea . . .
Are you imagining this?
Can you see the otters actually doing this?
Does it break your heart a little?
Does it seduce you just a bit
into loving more
this odd hard world?
Oh otters, wrap yourselves tight! And sleep,
exactly like you do, floating but seaweed-held
in our salty living waters! Oh otters,
wrap yourselves tight! And you,
the one who doesn’t, the one who doesn’t
tether himself down right,
we are with you as you float away,
we are with you as you sleep
and lose yourself in the night.


- Teddy Macker

Poem for the day:

September

Detaching myself this autumn day
from world news, I turn to
the ravens and finches for
authentic reports. Walnuts drop,
cracking open just enough
for beaks to pry their meat
or squirrels to glean and plant
in their secret gardens.

"Last days for baths
in the fountain," broadcast the finches.
Eating and drinking, everyday toil,
I think how we share
a similar life, except for wars,
crime and generations of greed.

From what book do they learn
to sing? to roost each night
on a favorite branch, or turn up
half-way to the border, their annual
winter circuit balancing each
hemisphere with pinioned precision
and plumed, imponderable grace?

- Andrea English

Repeating History


In Krakow, on the hour
A trumpeter recalls
an interrupted call, warning invasion,
The alarm arrested by an arrow
piercing the psyche
of a people. Repeat


Everywhere, injuries
enshrined, history felt
Repeatedly, wounds
remembered. The wounded,
dead forgotten by the bowman,
marksman, indifferent
bomber. Forgotten by the one
who ordered the arrow.


We repeat, but cannot
delete fear, erase blood.
We repeat slights and stabs,
rapes and rage of the ages.


All of us are history
Redacted, invented
Stories of our innocence
And their guilt.


We carry our persistent culture,
Our ignorance of a fragile
Original root—a curious explorer
Into darkness, into


Separation from a whole
Which held us. Hewing a
Path toward more, a forked
Road, we move


Away from each other,
Away from ourselves.


- Rebecca del Rio

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Repeating History...

---

Thanks for sharing this particularly beautiful, poignant, and haunting soft cry for the species to wake up. It moves me to register my discomfort and terror over the continued enshrining of 9-11 debris around the country. These memorials "am become death - the destroyer of worlds." They divide, condemn, justify the culture of bigotry-ridden permanent warfare.

Forgive me, Larry if these comments are inappropriate for your poetry postings. But today's poem moved me deeply and touched a nerve, as one who walked through WTC daily for five years as a young man, and who now quakes at the horrors being wrought in the name of our loss and grief.

Drought

The fir tree points
claw needles up
imploring rain
for greening
dry branches display
their prickle fingers
thirsting for mist
or thunder
Here ,now,there
brown spots appear
and nesting birds
peck up their beaks
Cawing for worm and water
Calling for nourishment
The fir tree groans
a stanza of its own
Rooted to ground
Beneath a cloudless sky
Rain…please…rain
Bless its sturdy stance
from root to tip
The fir stands
Defiant in all climate
every day is drier
There is fire on the way

- Maryann Schacht

No One Leaves Home


no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere


is safer than here


- Warshan Shire

Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Born in 1988, Warsan has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally – including recent readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, North America and Kenya- and her début book, ‘TEACHING MY MOTHER HOW TO GIVE BIRTH’ (flipped eye), was published in 2011. Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma and Poetry Review and in the anthology ‘The Salt Book of Younger Poets’ (Salt, 2011). She is the current poetry editor at SPOOK magazine. In 2012 she represented Somalia at the Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. She is a Complete Works II poet. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Warsan is also the unanimous winner of the 2013 Inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize.

The New Colossus


Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"




- Emma Lazarus
New York City, 1883
(Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)

In Tribute to Etty Hillesum - Author of An Interrupted Life, Murdered at Auschwitz 10/30/43


(1)
There are enemies
who want to make
your world narrow
and they say
it’s not so bad, there are
plenty of shops that serve your kind,

but the fences tighten
and each morning the boundary gets closer
and there is no place left to go.

Etty, wakes to learn
the forest in her city
is closed to Jews.

The pleasure of a picnic
has been stolen
and to love life is a criminal transgression.

The few trees outside the window,
she writes
must be a forest for us now.

We must become full on meager
scraps of God’s world
trafficking illegal joy.


(2)
In 1942
they loaded cattle cars with Jews.
Etty said,
“All right. So now I learn
to travel light.

She took the Bible and
Letters to a Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke.

She said
“We’ll live
until we’re dead,”
and in the dark
she sat and read.


- Simone Denny

Prayer


Do you really think
that God cares
who wins the Super Bowl
or the lottery or the war
or who gets the parking place
or the promotion?


Don't waste your prayers
asking for special favors
of the One who has given
us our days and our nights,
our time on earth,
sequoias and poppies,
blue whales and blue herons
and - even more - each other.


Here is the only prayer I know
worth the breath.
Say it with me:
Wow!
Thank you!
Amen!


- Larry Robinson

Mystic

They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the
experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon-water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which
means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all my senses awake.
Hogging it down like a pig I call the feeding of corpses.

- D.H. Lawrence

School Prayer


In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon

and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
- wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell - on Earth my home,

and in the mansions of the stars.

- Diane Ackerman

There, She is Gone! Here She Comes!


I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side
spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for
the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, I
stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle
with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone"!

"Gone where"?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in
mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to
her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the
moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone"!
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other
voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes"!

- Henry Van Dyke

Sent this to a friend who likes ships.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

There, She is Gone! Here She Comes!

I am standing upon the seashore....

---

For Guy Davenport

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
we dance the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again, we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone
out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

- Wendell Berry

(Sitin' on) The Dock of the Bay
Song by Otis Redding


Sittin' in the morning sun
I'll be sittin' when the evening comes
Watching the ships roll in
Then I watch them roll away again, yeah
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

There, She is Gone! Here She Comes!

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side
spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for
the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, I
stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle
with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone"!

"Gone where"?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in
mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to
her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the
moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone"!
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other
voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes"!

- Henry Van Dyke

---

Pomegranates

Hard pomegranates sundered

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...4_16-03-54.png

By excess of your seeds,
You make me think of mighty brows
Aburst with their discoveries!

If the suns you underwent,
O pomegranates severed,
Wrought your essence with the pride
To rend your ruby segments,

And if the dry gold of your shell
At instance of a power
Cracks in crimson gems of juice,

This luminous eruption
Sets a soul to dream upon
Its secret architecture.

- Paul Valéry


Les Grenades

Dures grenades entr'ouvertes
Cédent à l'excès des vos grains,
Je crois voir des fronts souverains
Eclatés de leurs découvertes!

Si les soleils par vous subis,
O grenades entre-bâillées,
Vous ont fait d'orgueil travaillées
Craquer les cloisons de rubis,

Et que si l'or sec de l'écorce
A la demande d'une force
Crève en gemmes rouges de jus,

Cette lumineuse rupture
Fait rÍver une âme que j'eus
De sa secrète architecture.

- Paul Valéry

Fire On The Hills


The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brushfire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.
He had come from far off for good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue and the hills merciless black,
The somber-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.



- Robinson Jeffers

the beauty of things :: robinson jeffers


To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality—
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

thanks, Larry ... Mr Jeffferson rocks.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

the beauty of things :: robinson jeffers...

---

Tashlikh These are the days of awe - time of inventory and a new beginning when harvest of what we sowed comes in. (What have we sown of discord & terror? Where have we fallen short of justice?) The scales dip & teeter; there is so much to discard, so much to atone. When our temples stood we loaded a goat with our transgressions and sent it to the wild. Now we must search our pockets for crumbs of our trespasses, our sins to cast upon the rivers. The days are upon us to take stock of our hearts. It is time to dust the images of our household gods, our teraphim, our lares. - Rafael Jesús González

Tashlij Estos son los días de temor - tiempo del inventario y un nuevo comienzo cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos entra. (¿Qué hemos sembrado de discordia y terror? ¿Dónde hemos fallado en la justicia?) Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian; hay tanto de que deshacerse, tanto por lo cual expiar. Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos cargábamos una cabra con nuestros pecados y la echábamos al desierto. Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos las migas de nuestras faltas, nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos. Están sobre nosotros los días para hacer inventario del corazón. Es tiempo de sacudir las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos, nuestros térafim, nuestros lares. - Rafael Jesús González

Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front


Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a
card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy somethin
they will call you. When they wnat you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.


- Wendell Berry

Ode To Tomatoes


The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.


- Pablo Neruda

Where the still small voice lives


Rosh Hashanah Poem 2015

This past year, how many times have you said to yourself
I knew it! I just KNEW it!!
I knew I shouldn’t have done that (but you did it)
I knew I should have done this (but you didn’t)
Between this knowing and that inconsistent action
Is noise
The bantering, whimpering, cajoling, cantankerous and singsong
Sound of our internal voices
It’s a cacophony of conflicting desires, wants and needs
That fills a giant internal tent
A 3 (million) ring circus at its center
Each act vying for our attention
Some with very strong opinions

Today one ring takes center stage and asks of us
Only one thing
Silence

The still small voice lives in this silence
The silence exists
Where time meets space
Where the void merges with eternity
Where Adonai resides with Eloheinu
This Silence with its answers and guidance
Lives in the sigh of a baby as it drifts to sleep
In the pause of breath in a passionate kiss
In the inhale between grief-filled sobs

The voice that speaks from this silence
Is soundless with texture and temperature
Or booms with flashing neon lights
Or comes on silent owl wings

This is the time of year to rejoice that another year
Has come and lived us fully and completely
In the noisy world of thought
We contemplate our successes and regrets
Our growth and losses

In the silence that the New Year invites
Is the chance to hear the Truth
Of how we really lived our days
To learn, or to regret?
To forgive, or be forgiven?

Between our knowing and our action
Is where the still small voice lives
This voice needs air
Breath
This voice needs space
Be quiet, still yourself
Pause
Wait
- Sally Churgel

Summer’s End

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...0_16-23-04.png
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...16-23-04-1.png

At 4:38 a.m. a mockingbird wakes to begin her concert. She prefers the topmost branches of the sycamore tree next door where she’s taken up residence. Throughout the day she entertains with a rapid succession of trills and chirps.

Meanwhile, in the fig tree

a blue jay wipes its beak

against a branch


From April to October the “national pastime” follows the long arc of the growing season. The highs and lows, wins and losses. Now, baseball is reaching its climax with the World Series and it too will soon go dormant.

Game-ending error

shortstop stares into his glove

-- the crowd … stunned silent


This afternoon entire trees are on fire. The liquidambars in the neighborhood proclaim the season with a spectacle of trees aglow in yellow, russet, and crimson.

Falling maple leaf

catches the sun’s failing light

for the last time


It’s time once again for the autumnal ritual of cleaning the gutters—another reminder that the road ahead is shorter than the one I’ve already traveled.

- andrew zarrillo