Mutability

Watercolor Painting by A. Godfrey

My life is yet again changing. I stand at the precipice. The wind rushes towards my face, I know I can’t look back, and I shouldn’t look down. And yet who can resist? The rocks are shards of slimed flint, a hungry maw waiting to swallow me up, beyond it the safety of the ocean. Will I reach there? Can I swim until I reach a safer shore?  I can’t turn back, because for once it is a risk of my choosing.

I fear all of the things behind me, the dirt paths, the paved roads, the villages, houses, the roses and winters that I try to forget and remember. I fear the rocks, as much as I fear the shore. The rocks will assure me peace at last, an end that I so justly deserve; I will mar myself against them and become nothing. I will fear nothing. Yet, there is a hope of life, of love. There is my love waiting for me when I reach the ocean, I trust in him to help me. I don’t trust myself; I don’t trust this risk. Not entirely, for who could with the winters of the past and the rocks at the bottom of my fall?

All of my life the path has owned me, my choices made for me, and many people have used their influence to guide me. For better or for worse, who is to know?  I was led, or forced towards every ledge, convinced to leap, not always landing surefooted and brave. This jump is mine, however. It is all mine, and though my love is waiting, I know that I must make it. He did not ask me, nor influence me in my choice. I created it, I own it. I must risk it, for as Percy Shelley once wrote “Nought may endure but Mutability”

Mutability

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! -For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutablilty.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Good Night comrades. I hope that in your dreams tonight that all of your chaos be unveiled and judgments rendered true.

Sincerely,

Abby