I heard the poem Foreseeing, which I've pasted in below, this morning. It was read aloud marvelously (as always) by Garrison Keillor during his NPR show the Writers Almanac. I took a serious pause as I heard it because it describes perfectly the moment I've been living for the past few months. I've been feeling as though I can see the end, or really just that I know and feel it's truly there, and I want to choose carefully the path I'll take to get there. However, I can not seem to decide which way to go. I am equally compelled by so many of the outlines and the possibilities that I just stand here a little dizzy and totally mesmerized by the view.

Foreseeing

by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it's simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won't go on
like this forever.

photography by Lynn Geesaman