Old Photographs.

I look back at rusting photographs
dusty smiles of happy days
on glossy paper,
where youth is eternal,
and there are no worries beyond
who can do the longest handstand.
Now I'm standing years ahead in time,
laughing at the girl who I used to be
yet missing it all at once
because things could have been done differently.
But, I guess if that were so
the Me now, would never know
how far it was, that I had come.
The circles my thoughts ran in my head
have shaped me into who I am,
for better or worse
every hardship, a curse
in my eyes
but a blessing in disguise
the skies were always blue
behind the clouds.
These pictures of friends,
Those I loved and lost
those I found again,
to me they've showed
that along lifes road
we change, and become old
but even the memories we don't remember
allowed us to grow.
Old photographs
keep us humble
for no matter how far we have come
or how far we have yet to go,
they remind us of where we began
and how we couldn't have made it alone



Image: Copyright Terry Smith, 2011.
amina bhatti

The Path.


You strayed from the path
stumbling blind into the sky somewhere,
tumbling into another corner of this 
roundabout earth.
Because it's all just swings and roundabouts
and your shadows come back to bite you.
You bit off more than you could chew,
you chose to,
your need for freedom
was in fact your greed for power,
to feel in control of the life they said was not your own.
You had to prove them wrong, and run alone,
so you strayed from the path,
the fields beside were so much wider,
filled with grassy carpets and flowers,
and now you're lost among them,
unable to find your way back
to the path.
Sometimes that's okay
but you can see the path there always,
and wonder where it might have led
if you hadn't strayed.
Would you be in a place where the grass is greener?
If you were patient,
if you were strong?
Or was this the failure made for you all along?
They said you would burn
for your wayward ways
but you had to know for sure
you weren't invincible.
Because the fire was so warm and pretty
and it wouldn't hurt you
if you told it not to.
The path is still there and it calls you,
but these flowers have become vines,
they tie you down and hold you,
and you just give up struggling after a while.
Because it's too late for redemption anyway,
right?


amina bhatti