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.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem