The path is the last impediment to the path.
—Lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
The path had not ended.
We had not arrived
anywhere except in a stand
of spruce where a new path
sprung to the left, and another
narrower path led to the right.
The main path curved up and
around the corner. I did not want
to turn around. I wanted to
arrive somewhere—to have
a marker of some kind. A view,
perhaps, or a giant stone.
Or a field of pink Indian paintbrush.
As it was, we turned back down
at the spruce glade where the paths
criss crossed. We all know we can never go back.
But this path gave the impression
that all was the same, that nothing
had changed between the time we
hiked up and the time we chose
to hike back down. But everything
had changed in the way that everything
does. And we didn’t notice it.
As we seldom do.
What is so great here is that the quote up top, strictly a philosophical thought, you turn into a story, those choices as physical paths, but in the true spirit of the quote, the poem waxes so finely philosophical by the end. These lines,
“But everything
had changed in the way that everything
does. And we didn’t notice it….”
So true.