Fifty years

A half century

isn’t even half a dream cycle

for a rock

which may sit impassive

or be carried

or be dropped

where, if it’s reencountered

it will be the same

But in a half century

a forest can swallow a town

that has been abandoned

Push up trunks through old foundations

Cover up the markers with its leaf fall

Fifty seasons, fifty rounds of rain and wind

tracked across the land

Recorded in the memory

of tree rings, river beds

and consciousness

Fifty years, each singular

And at once the same

And if we rise

and travel through

a cycle of awareness

coming back to where we see the whole

Then fifty years is ending and beginning

A season in the journey of the soul.

© Wendy Mulhern

March 2, 2012