Once - Now

Old man.

Loose change in a plastic bag,

coat turned against the cold.

Trip out to fuel the car.

Once just part of his day,

now a trip out.

Seventeen pounds and sixty one pence!

Once a weeks worth of his sweat,

now a splash of fuel for the car.

Walking stick in hand.

Once a 'hop, skip and a jump',

now a marathon of distance and planning.

Mask swinging from one ear.

Adjustments. 

So many adjustments to make.

Once life was simple.

Now,

now so complicated!

Then - Now - What

'Then' is what made me.
The family I was born to.
All the things I did in my early life,
all the things early life did to me,
shaping the person your eyes see now.
Read my words,
hear my voice,
my early life shaped them.
The good and the bad,
the joy and the pain,
I must have those memories!.
My days of childhood are my foundations.
My family,
my friends,
my loves and experiences.

My 'now' sits on that past.
My past is my rock from which my 'now' bursts forth with confidence.
The confidence in knowing my place in this world.
Realising just what I have,
and how fortunate I am to have it.
I have known and met my ancestors.
Where I came from fuels the life within me.

'What' is my future.
I must learn not to be a slave to what is yet to happen,
for; although my 'now' can help shape it.
It is not like a road stretching out in front of me,
solid,
tangeable,
mapped out.
Nothing is mapped out
I have yet to discover it,
to form it,
to shape it.

No one's tomorrow is certain.
I must live in my 'now' and learn to enjoy what I have.
I must study all I see.
Look; then look again.
I must feel it,
smell it,
taste the world around me,
the world I have helped to create.