We sometimes speak of continents
pulling apart, land bridges severed,
the route taken to get here now gone,
no going back, no back to go to.
The continent of my youth, my
young adulthood is gone, receded
into the fog of fading memory, and I
am now a prisoner of sorts on this
new continent of life, moving ever
more quickly to an unavoidable end.
I do not know when these continents
separated, for I was always looking
forward, assuming a return would
always lie waiting behind me.
Perhaps it was the birth of a child
which marked a seismic transition,
but if not then certainly with the end
of a long marriage, casting off all
I had known, lost in this new world
that seemed to open before me.
It hardly matters, for I know that I
cannot go back and would not
want to were it possible, so what
is gone will be a fading memory
and that is as it now must be.