You linger in the approaching twilight. The elongated shadows of victory’s laurel tree casting doubt. Should you have taken this twisting path? You knew the journey’s end would menace, threaten, but sweeter times may still be yet to come, or so you told yourself along the way.
In sunlight, when you began this trek, the path was far less treacherous than that which lies ahead, that which is now hidden as you bear witness to the darkening sky. There are those who refuse to travel at dusk, and for them the journey is short, too short. You are not that traveler. You persisted, the flicker of hope lighting your way and now have covered much terrain to arrive weary, but far wiser, at a destination still unseen, unknown.
Beautiful and radiant, when you first set out, yet now, as you return, your hair is no longer the color of chestnuts, your visage no longer unlined. When the regalia of youth no longer fit, those trappings, too, you shed long ago. Was it worth it, this journey of triumph and tragedy? “Yes,” you whisper to the rising moon now glimmering on the horizon, “Most definitely,” you say into the sacred gloaming. And, on you go, slower but no less steadfast, still making your way along the winding road.
Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit her Mercy University faculty page:
https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages and her writer’s website https://sites.google.com/view/wendy-mages-storyteller