Poem | What Once Was

What Once Was
by Elizabeth Alraune
(9/85)

What once was
Shall never again be
Like the leaf
That comes from its mother tree
Once
only
it falls
Only once
does it fall
Into the pool
The pool
of never ending death
In its helpless state
it cries
It's drowning under the deep blue skies.
Darker and darker grows the night
Weaker and weaker grows the fight
But as darkness dawns
A new day breaks
and the turn is made complete
For every old turn faded
There is a new, sharper one to replace it
The same mistakes will not be made
The new path will not allow it
The fear is stronger
The path longer
It is familiar,
yet not
It wears some
Past mistakes seem to provide
the foundation for future ones
A choice needs to be made:
Take the same path with different pitfalls
or choose another one -
where past and future mistakes
aren't so intricately woven together
If guided by fear
the choice is an easy one
If by love and pain
the choice is just as clear
Which should it be?
Blinded by confusion
a path is taken -
absent is the knowledge of which
and so are the pitfalls -
present or not,
the traveller knows not.