Orientation

When I saw Elizabeth  
after her husband died,  
she told me how she lay 
facing him in his hospital bed.
She could feel his slow breath, 
her heartbeat keeping time with his.  

That was in 1998. 

I showed her a photo of my boys 
walking side by side at Tofino beach. 
I thought it was a simple photo,
but she thought it was perfect. 

She loved how it captured 
so many directions at once: 
the vertical movement of the boys 
stepping forward into the waves 
that flowed toward them;  
the horizontal lines that split 
the sky, the sea, and the shore;
the way the shadows of their departing 
trailed behind them in shimmering lines;
as their footprints vanished 
forever into the wet sand. 

Back then, 
my life faced mostly forward.
Now that I’m older,
my life faces mostly backward. 
These are the moments 
that come to me
and I wonder if perhaps 
I too might someday learn 
to see all directions at once.

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Music pairing: Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now (Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 2022.

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 I hereby declare that this written work is entirely my own creation and was not generated using artificial intelligence. All wording, structure and ideas are conceived and grown organically from my own unique human experience, personal thoughts, efforts, knowledge and research.