“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Running,
Always running,
Sometimes toward
And sometimes away
From those things
That promise to be
Life changing
And even
Life threatening.
How can one thing
Be both, I wonder?
Yet, they often are.
At the moment of birth
When a child emerges
From its warm, safe
Cocoon
To take its first breath,
It isn't aware
Of the enormity of
What it has just
Survived,
Only of light
It has never experienced
And strange sounds that
Had once been muted,
Rendered almost silent
By its mother's body.
It is a change for which
The child had not been given
A choice,
And only the first
Of many to come.
Yet, as it matures
Life begins to bring
The child choices
That would bring
The changes
Setting it
On its life path,
Leading it on
To other choices
And new opportunities
For changes both favorable
And not so favorable,
Until the day comes when
As it had been at birth
The final change
Appears at hand
Giving the one
Who once was a child
No choice
But to change
One last time.

C, 2023