space poem #8

 

Out passed the belt,

a planet undone by circumstance,

out where the light dwindles into dreams

of all that might have happened

if the choices had been different,

out with the small rocks,

sometimes planets, sometimes not,

a person can think for days -

or should that be nights -

about decisions made

and under the swell of all that time,

for without light time becomes almost meaningless,

and in the warp of all that thinking,

lose themselves to shame, to regret, to missed chances

and drown beneath the memories of what is

compared to what could have been

if only selections were made on weighing the opportunity 

instead of escaping (and so reinventing) the past.