Passages

Dear and faithful readers, please excuse my silence this week as time and pressure have prevented me from accomplishing everything I desired, this site included. As summer wears on, my own life has brought me to something of an emotional crossroad. We’ve been in the "kid business" for quite some time and now are on the brink of moving to the next stage of life, whatever that may be. Only last month, we were immersed in a flurry of graduations, with the various young people in our extended lives graduating from high school, junior high and so on. Then, as I believe I’ve previously mentioned, our youngest departs for college in August and leaves my fetching bride and I in the proverbial empty nest. Needless to say, this is a time of transition for us. As is so oft the case, today’s poem comes in the form of a sailing metaphor. I wrote this particular one over the course of several years, adding a stanza or two at each graduation I attended until it culminated this last month. Life, to me, is very like an ocean passage, or a series of passages punctuated by departures and landfalls. Those departures can be bittersweet, but they are necessary in order to arrive at the next landfall in our lifelong journey. Some folks seem to dwell wholly upon the sad parts of leaving, or being left, but that’s merely a slice of the total package of our experience. And beyond the departures lie the adventure of life, just waiting out there for us to cast off and discover it. So let us turn from the safety of the harbor, from all those things familiar, and fix our gaze upon the far horizon. That horizon is the future and there’s no telling what it might hold.

Passages
Life is filled with passages
Which lead from shore to shore
To islands and to continents
Where we’ve not been before
What the future holds for us
In those ports which lie ahead
Is difficult to see from here
Regardless what is said
However, if your training
Is complete and you prepare
For your passage, and the adventure
Which awaits us all out there
Then your journey, though difficult
Can be a fruitful and wondrous one
As you cross the trackless seas of life
From the rising to setting sun
Each passage begins with departures
When we cast off from the quay
Bidding farewell to things familiar
And choosing to sail away
Yet, we know at journey’s end
Across the expanse of blue
Shrouded in mists of the future
There are landfalls waiting for you
Today, as you stand upon the decks
With the halliards poised in hand
Preparing to leave the harbor’s safety
And bid your adieu to the land
Remember fondly what lies behind
In ports you have thus far known
But boldly turn and canvas raise
Striking out for coasts of your own
Though tempests may besiege you
Before your passage is through
May you sail courageously onward
And may ever your course be true
               By Frank Carpenter ©