Reflections on the River

I catch myself in silver glass, not searching for lost youth,
but meeting the eyes of a traveler
who has walked ten thousand mornings into dawn.
These lines map journeys taken,
mountain paths and ocean crossings,
nights of worry beside sickbeds,
and mornings waking to birdsong after grief.

Time does not steal; it bestows.
A certain slant of light now touches me differently,
I’ve earned these silver strands,
this slower, more deliberate dance.
Once I battled the current, arms thrashing against the flow,
desperate to remain unchanged,
to stand fixed upon shifting sand.

But rivers know better.
They surrender to gravity’s pull,
carving canyons through patience,
carrying yesterday’s rainfall toward tomorrow’s sea.
What lives beyond the dropping of masks?
This face I wear now, my truest face,
speaks of laughter that has cracked me open,
tears that have carved channels of compassion.

My body whispers now instead of shouting,
and I’ve learned to listen closely,
this vessel that has carried me so far
deserves my kindness, not my scorn.
I’ve watched beloved faces disappear into mist,
some gradually, some in sudden thunder.
Their absence shaped me as surely as their presence,
their love never truly gone, just transformed.

The people who remain,
how precious their ordinary breathing beside me,
the casual touch of fingers passing salt,
conversations that need no beginning or end.
What matters now stands in sharper relief:
the taste of blackberries still warm from August sun,
a child’s hand slipped trustingly into mine,
the weight of silence shared between old friends.

I am becoming essential,
distilled through time’s patient alchemy
into something truer than the scattered self
that once raced from moment to moment, always hungry.
So I will not chase phantoms in bottles and jars
that promise the impossible return.
Instead, I’ll wear these years like a coat of many colors,
sewn from every season I have weathered.

Let me be a tree that stands unashamed,
roots deepening as branches reach skyward still,
offering shade to travelers who come after,
dropping seeds that will flower long after I’m gone.

This is my becoming,
not a fading, but a ripening,
not an ending, but a gathering,
the slow, magnificent harvest of a life.