The Journey Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

It is autumn and the cold is setting in
and still you must journey on

no longer do waves
of wisteria and honeysuckle
cascade over walls

your toil is not over: you have paid
your dues but your work is undone

you will turn from those who stand
and watch you go
but you will not leave them
even though they cannot go with you

trust your steps long since
laid down within you
and walk the path to which they’ve brought you

there will be no going back
you will know it even as storms rage
even as you remember
the wisteria and the honeysuckle

you will shed more and more of yourself
as you go and yet find more

you will see the stars
patterned like tea leaves swirling
overhead through the lonely nights

that teach you (even when the darknesses
of doubts beset you) what you have always known:
that the journey was always within you

you are free to turn back, to return,
but memory is a treacherous path:
where it leads is not where you once were

where you were is changed forever
changed with each step, with each breath
with each vision of where you are going

home which is somewhere you cannot remember
to which on your journey you will always be going.