Leave the past

(in response to The Little Tune... a poem by Peter Ackroyd)

Leave the past

… Before it leaves you

Before it believes you

After it means you

Before it teethes you

After it reproduces you

When it begins to annoy you

When it leaves an odour, behind

After it throws you away

… with elasticity

After the past is past of its own accord

And before it repeats itself and

You

Before you want it to be Non

And you also want it to Stop

When you, and ‘It’ arrive together

………………………………………….At Non Stop

It seems quite easy on a day to day basis. There's the door, there's the room, there's the walls surrounding portions of life that need to be contained. Close the door. Lock it. Put the key away. Easy. Taken care of. But the past has a way of spilling into the present, and the future, even when it's bolted behind a thick door. Memories dealt with reappear on my children's faces. They are affected by moments I have lived a long time ago, so I look at myself again, and again. It's a mirror, a bloody huge mirror I have to look at everyday.

Leave the past alone. Step away from the bridge. Don't look back. Don't look down. Look ahead. That's what they told me when I got my motorcycle license. Follow the road with your eyes and the bike will take you there. Look at the end destination and you will keep your balance. But how do we concentrate on the destination when we can't really tell where we are going?

Present. I'm supposed to be in the present. Live in the present. Leave the past.

Seaweed tangled around my feet. The powerful undertow snags and tugs. Reaching for the light, the call of the future. It’s hard to get out from the entanglement of the past; hard to leave it. To lay it to rest. To scatter the earth onto its contained form. To sink it down to settled depths. To where it embeds, becomes foundations on which to stand, to push off, to rise. Leave the past. Leave the past, not behind, but as a place. A place that can be returned to. But there are so many other places to visit also. The past offers familiarity, and some sense of safety in this. But this is to deprive the unknown places of safety. Perhaps the greater safety lies ahead. Perhaps I have never known safety like they have to offer. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. A little tune for you. Where am I now? In an unfamiliar light-hearted place? If I touch down lightly, what will happen? Will I feel less real? Less solid? The past is solid, weighty. The future ephemeral. And now, the pen on the paper. Weighty enough to leave a mark, a trace of me, but not so weighty to stagnate. Right now I am moving, moving across the page, moving from left to right – from past to future? In the present, always letting go, always inching forward into the pristine space. One word, one thought, one impulse at a time. This pen, recaptured, reclaimed from my past. My first purchase that I remember as a significant decision for myself, defining what was important to me. Link to my grandfather, the money his birthday gift. Yet it is a past that is present, part of me, part of my future. Words. Moving across a page. Onwards. Past, present, future intermingled. All in this moment of nib, page, ink and the impulses within. A coalescence. A convalescence. The well-being of writing. The well-formed word, the arch of form, the arch of my mouth, arching. Aching. This is where I came in today, aching. But not where I leave. Not the same. Shaped and formed. Contemplated. Soothed. The ache…