- The Master of Destiny –

John Herlihy

I like to think

I am the master of my own destiny.

I like to imagine

I rule the workings of my own fate.

I like to wonder

At all the possibilities that may happen.

I often feel sorrowful

At all the possibilities that may never happen.

I sometimes see myself

A solitary man in a canoe paddling in the rain.

I have no idea where to go

The heavens cloud-covered from here to Spain.

There I am in a jungle

climbing thru thick foliage to mountain peaks

Leeches, leaves, tree stumps

What is it that my heart and soul seeks.

With no road there before me,

I make it my business to create my own road.

I do at times carry a burden,

We all bear up under some kind of load.

Some things we are taught,

Without the lesson being put into words.

The silence seems a lie,

Do we understand the language of the birds.

Truth can be a lie,

In the same way that truth can be sad.

In truth we must comply,

Even if truth doesn’t always make us glad.

Some truths run a grove deep,

And in facing them we may weep.

Other truths run in a tide shallow,

That in the end just make us feel hollow.

I have learned that in some truth,

There is a lie that no honesty can repay.

I have learned that in a lie,

There appears a truth that the lie will convey.

We wish lies for ourselves,

Especially if we don’t truly know what we want.

Destiny may end up giving us,

Unexpected challenges our weaknesses to taunt.

I had set out in life to discover,

New worlds, new experiences, new emotions.

My destiny helped me uncover,

Things that will reveal to me my true myself.

As I said, I like to think,

That I am the master of my own destiny.

I like to image,

The workings of my own fate.

Now at the end of the road,

I have come belatedly to realize.

That destiny is a pathway, not a person,

To be a journey of discovery that we devise.

In writing our own story,

If we live life to the fullest and never pretend.

Our destiny becomes our own glory,

No one else’s, only mine, to the very end.

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(c) John Herlihy 25 January 2019