joh

-- Tasting the Future --

­­John Herlihy

 Honestly, I have mixed emotions about the past;

I rarely remember much of what happened.

Name and face of people I knew disappear.

I live in many foreign countries across the globe;

But the details of what happened lost in time’s past.

Oddly, I remember clearly what never happened;

I never had an invisible friend to talk to as a child.

Although some of my friends eventually came invisible.

I never became a policeman, fireman, doctor, lawyer;

But a teacher, thousands of student I no longer remember.

With regard to the future, I have no mixed emotions;

I look forward with anticipation to what may happen.

The names and faces of the people I might meet.

The things that may happen, my fate about to unfold;

I take comfort that the future will soon come to me.

In fact, thinking about the coming day, I can taste it;

Since the future never arrive, the tasting never dies.

The sense of tomorrow simply fills me with delight.

So strong the feeling that I often forget about today;

Small wonder that I remember so little of yesterday.

Sometimes my days didn’t always go as planned;

So much could and did happened that went awry.

Still, no need to do anything to make the future arrive.

It just came to me without doing anything at all;

The future there, floating towards me as a fast river.

As a child, on some kind of journey of discovery;

As a young man, at the beginning of a long journey.

As a middle-aged man, in the middle of a long journey.

As an elderly man, now at the end of a long journey;

And yet the future is still there, and so is the journey.

I never remember what in the future I may taste;

I never remember what in the future I hoped for.

The present always reminds me the future is not here.

There in the distance, always out there, yet so close;

What lies in the future always unknown somehow.

Looking into the future is like looking into the dark;

You know things are there you just can’t see them.

Things that belong to you and that will come to you;

All you need to do is wait, just as night always comes.

The future, like the night, has a bigness that takes over;

Filling me with such wonder, a kind of four-leaf clover.

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Copyright © John Herlihy

Saturday 26 December 2020