I Expect to be Astounded

Knowing that looking in the other direction offers little comfort,

I tell myself to look forward and expect the day to be interesting.

Whenever I grope for meaning, for validation, for vindication

looking backward at all the places I’ve been and things I’ve done,

there is never enough satisfying evidence in the scrapbooks I keep.

Hot winds sweep out of the twisting tunnel of time

blowing memories like dry curled leaves through deserted streets.

No one is there and I can’t be sure anybody ever was.

Photographs prove something happened once to somebody

with everybody standing all in a row smiling beneath the tree

but I learned long ago that the camera is capable of mystifying tricks.

So I mostly forget, look ahead, and expect to be astounded.