you are here

By this posting next week, I shall certainly be a year older; cannot speak to the being wiser.  Some years seem to have more packed into them--this has been one of those years.  At an odd point with so many things and found this Jong poem to resonate with a loud ZING when I read it this summer.  I cannot say that I am standing at a crossroads; this feels much more like I'm standing on the edge of an M4 interchange--the signs are all in English, but they still make no sense to me.

My favorite line in the poem is "not in our nature to know what is journey and what is arrival."    I wouldn't object at all to a soupçon of certainty in any life category at the moment.

You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

"You Are There" by Erica Jong, from Love Comes First. © Penguin Group, 2009.