Before The Road Poem by ashok jadhav

The dawn is gray, and silence presses close,
As if the world itself awaits the step.
I stand among familiar walls and trees,
Yet feel the weight of distance yet to come.
The hearth is cold, the hearth that held my past,
And every corner hums with memory.
No hand can stay me; no voice turns the tide,
The path ahead is marked by absence still.
I hear the wind, indifferent to my choice,
And watch the sky unroll its pale expanse.
The heart contracts against the leaving hour,
While longing stretches backward to what stays.
A step will break the stillness, move me forth,
And leave behind the safety of known ground.
Yet even as I go, the shadow clings,
A tether to the life I cannot hold,
And in that quiet space before departure,
I know the cost, though not the measure of pain.