And then the need to live with a sense of time that
allows room for change, that is we don't accept ourselves
as we are and we would like at least to have enough time
to do what we can to make some changes.
It's called His New Life.
Now he'd be stricken to find the road on his usual Sunday drive
washed out near the quarry, forcing him to take
a detour that passed her house.
But in his new life, the life he can feel slowly approaching,
it will offer an opportunity.
Now he would want to find her house abandoned.
Its windows boarded, its rotted roof open to rain.
But in his new life, he'll be relieved
to see lights burning in every room, relieved
to hear sprightly music spilling from open windows.
In his old life before he could wish
her a chance for a festive evening,
he'd require evidence of a long penance
for letting her feelings for him give way
to feelings for someone else.
But in his new life, he will simply
assume that after an interval of remorse,
she did her best to be more constant, dependable
as the sun rising on schedule to make another morning.
Is your life today fuller than his?
That kind of question belongs to his old life.
Whereas his new life will be conspicuous for leaving
behind all comparisons.
Now it's true he's comparing the life he's living
to the life he will be living.
But in the future, the two will flow together
to make one river, one that's content to go on flowing
without once asking what it might be if it were
free of the mud and gravel beneath it
and the banks penning it in on either side.