The human mind is not tethered here, where life is happening. It is free to drift. To the past, our future. To other possible realities where things might have panned out differently.

We are the first stage of life on Earth
to be burdened
by the contemplation of time 

Its endless passing,
or the weight of it
lying ahead, just up the road.

It’s only natural
when we find ourselves
plagued by this
 
The past so sweet or horrid that it tempts us
to wade within its echo,
consumed in the pain or joy we may find there

The future insufferably unknowable
despite our mind’s best attempts to plot every conceivable outcome,
it remains,
looming and perpetual beyond a curtain we are never permitted to draw  
until we have already arrived to live it
 
until we are Here,
watching the opportunities
we hadn’t known we’d had
slide out of our grip, like air.
Innumerable pathways folding
until there remains only
one

It’s important to remind ourselves
that the past
is no longer happening.

That the future, though uncertain,
grows from all we seed Here
in these present moments.
So plant your heart
deep, in the soil

We must remember that regardless of all that transpires
there is only ever Now, and despite all that lies ahead of
us, even when we get there, it will still be Here.

Here

in the present,
is all we ever are