Choices Poem by Peter Madden

Gazing into the water beneath me...
my reflection distorted by its constant flow...
i ponder my life and all that i have done...
the good and the bad...
the right and the wrong...
and like my reflection they become distorted too..


i see that there was no black and white...
no simple concepts of morality...
i have hurt some in my life that i admit...
yet if i had not others would have been hurt in their place...
so it was not about the right and the wrong....
it was about my choices....


choices....
a small word with big conciquences...
we make most of them them day to day without thinking...
and even our smallest one can change the world...
this is the power we have in this life...
a power we take for granted...


without thought we can destroy someones life...
or hurt those we care for...
when we do we seek to excuse our choices...
to blame the influence of others...
but it is our choice and ours alone...
in the end we must accept our decisions...


there lies the madness of regret...
in truth we know that all thats has passed is how we chose it to be...
our choices made us who we are...
and where we are today...
we can no more change this than we can stop the rivers flow...
all we can do is to choose where we go from here...
i never said choices were easy...


i gaze down into the water beneath me...