I
There was a time
when the day’s first light revealed my life in full flush,
contours clear and certain, as if a map well-drawn—
each minute a familiar signpost. Now only darkness
folds in my vision, and I strain to recall
that figure who once held entire worlds inside his chest,
searching knowledge like a diver seeking pearls,
caring not for the surface of quick necessity.
II
What happened to him, the one who believed
a single mind could tilt the axis of destiny,
who cast his future bright and ahead of all seasons?
I stand now at a crossroads:
this older face a stranger to the hungry youth I was.
Time’s passing confounds me,
dims the fiery promise once etched upon my bones.
III
Yet the darkness holds its own shape, its rough music—
there is pattern there I might yet read.
I refuse to remain in mere survival’s hush.
I will usher my scattered powers together
like currents converging in deep ocean tracts,
weaving new routes out of old, half-forgotten streams.
IV
I must uproot stale habits, re-ignite that keen blade of effort,
reclaim a stamina I once spent so freely.
I know how to gather loose threads,
to braid them into something shimmering, useful, mine.
Call it resilience, or the code that emerges under shadow’s press:
a way of lifting my gaze again toward distant crests.
V
In the quiet ferment of this turning point,
I sense a vision hardening into shape,
not a return to what was, but a different flowering—
a growth that honors what I lost and found again.
Let me lift myself toward that top tier, that distant horizon,
not to dominate, but to widen the field of becoming.
In the opacity of the future, I lean forward,
gathering strength from my own dark roots,
ready to rise into whatever brightness awaits.
