Moving Out

Time doesn’t move because it was asked to

It’s strange to see how one’s life
Can so easily be placed in a box
And yet, leave so much strewn about.
How a tree can be uprooted and replanted
A stream can be dammed and diverted
Leaving both a scar and a space to fill.

Glancing back at an empty room
Cluttered with treasures and trinkets
To be left, but not forgotten.
Filled with a melancholy gloom.
How much could our time be worth,
With seemingly so little to show for it?

The things we leave behind
The things we take with
The things that greet us when we arrive
The good, the bad, the gray
Do we really get a say?
How much do we choose where we lay?

When a swallow flies away at autumn’s dawn
What can it hope to bring?
Does it back a bag,
Hoist Pandora’s box,
Sing a goodbye
Until next Spring?
Or does it simply, solemnly,
Flap its wings?

Does it make it different?
Knowing I will place myself in a box again,
Come August, come December?
Trip over goodbyes to new faces,
And hellos to old?
Knowing, here or there or elsewhere,
I’ll be missing something different.

Time moves because it has to.