Tracks

Yesterday on the beach, I walked along the tire tracks the beach ranger left. Those tracks now were gradually erased by the tide. Just like time erases our tracks and traces. Some of them are not important, so it seems, so it doesn't matter. Some are better erased. But there are some that we wish would not be erased by time. All part of the cycle, though, like leaving a year to enter a new one.

But some things linger. Like a conversation may be over as soon as the sounds of the voices dissipate into space, but the ideas expressed may stay with you. And of course, art of the visual kind and words written, those can stay a long time, from year to year, like in this blog, too. Tracks that are not erased, but that instead can remind us of lessons of years past.

Also I thought of people in my life, and remembered those who are no longer alive. It seems as though their tracks in my heart will always stay, as long as there is my heart.

And I wonder what tracks will be made this year.
What poems will be written? What sunsets will astonish?
What blossoms will be so fragrant that they pause us in our hurries?
What lovers will meet for the first time? Who will be born this year?
In other years to come, what tracks will remain of this year just begun?

----
by: Steve Wing, Florida
originally posted in January 2007