-- Always Somewhere Else --
John Herlihy
The future is always somewhere else,
Never the place where you really are.
A land you may find all by yourself,
With no need to travel there one day.
Because one fine day it will travel to you.
The present stretches clear to the known horizon;
But the future lies far beyond the known horizon.
We wait for the future to arrive, but it never does.
It always remains silent, there in the far distance.
The thin lip of the earth that never speaks,
Shining as a mystery forever eternal and pure,
The bright, definitive line joining earth and sky.
The future follows the sun from somewhere else,
Although always to the place where you really are.
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Copyright © John Herlihy
Thursday 1 April 2021
You made me recall a little bar set back in a working-class neighborhood in Santa Cruz that I had the pleasure of spending New Year's hour, unfortunately with my aging cousin who mourn for her lost husband, rather than a girlfriend. The place was nicely called, Someplace Else. So if a angry person asked a drunk that was late, where he or she was, they could answer truthfully, "someplace else."
Ron