How Many Times Have I Come This Way?


The air was cold as I walked into the door at work today.
I wondered aloud now how many years I have came this way.
How many times have my feet tread this worn concrete path?
How many days remain before I like others retreat into the past?

There are pines that now grow full and tall in the field behind our plant.
Yet when to this place I first came, they were but meager saplings of chance.
So it is to this point of reflection that I have at last come, yet still just another day.
I wonder… Oh how I wonder in all these years working six and seven days…
Just how many dreams have I by not being free; how many dreams have I let slip away?

There is no way to measure this un-traveled road, nor is there a way in which to tell.
For what dreams have escaped is not mine to wonder as in the past I shouldn’t dwell.
What was then is no longer now and what will be is only for the future to see.
Therefore I punch the clock once again, and stroll past new and young faces.
I smell the smells, I hear the machinery whine, I pass unnoticed, just counting my time.
 
In my office now am I secure; away from the machinery's roar.
I pause to again reflect; and I wonder if to this life there is more.
Who have I touched, and what have I after all the years done?
I have seen so many come, and so many go and to what end?
Shall I ever see fulfillment in my days of vanity under the sun?

The clock continues on, the hands of irrecoverable time begin to groan.
Soon, oh all to soon there will be no clock in my day.
No missions left to complete, no meetings to come my way.
Over and out… now signing off…with new faces in a new day…
how many times have I come this way?

J. Allen Wilson © ONE 2007

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