Well, my vacation is over now. But while I was off, I had the chance to visit with some of my life's many friends. It was an amazing chance to reconnect with some people I really love. Change and age and trouble were in the air, but so were blessing and family and God. I wrote this poem as a reflection and prayer.


You Can’t Go Back Home

They say you can’t.
And it makes sense, of course.
Nothing is as it was.
There is no such thing as standing still.
Although we can pretend there is
Or wish there was
And convince ourselves that what is
Is not.
But you are not the only one to move.
The whirlwind of age and transformation
Blows through wherever we are
And aren‘t.

The friends have wrinkled a bit.
The grey grows in the beards
And more of the women seem to color their hair.
But the bigger changes are the new fears
And the courage and faith that meet them.
The pain in the back or wrist.
The loss of a sister or a wife.
The job and the retirement fund swallowed
By the monster misnamed recession.
The child that looses their way
Or the diagnosis of uncertainty.
And the strange mid-life realization
That it really will end.

You cannot go back.
That is certain.

But you can go forward.
Go ahead and home.
For the hearts and souls --
Battered by the dreams broken
Or hopes realized and then recognized
As maybe not all
We had hoped for --
These hearts and souls
Deepen
In the whirlwind and the years.
Time grows us -- if we let it.
And friendships
Soften
Into a love
That never ends.