It's the Only Way I Know How

The tide is known for retreating, sure.
Ebb and flow, everybody knows that.
But you won't hear a person talk about the tide rewinding.
Or pausing.
Or playing at any other pace than Now.
Because it doesn't. It doesn't stop.
It doesn't wait for you to finish one more page in your paperback.
Or to dig out the sand castle moat.
It doesn't wait for you to look up.

The years sneak by disguised as days.
Hiding behind hours' glasses.
Where did they go? We ask
Looking this way and that, palms up, heads shaking,
Like 'how did they just disappear? I swear they were just right here.'

But we miss them altogether, the years,
If we don't look closely.
If we don't mark a spot with our shovels and pails,
If we don't watch how far the ocean crawls away from where it was, from where we were.
If we don't keep pace with the tide.


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This is the space where I mark the spot with shovels and pails, with stories and quotables and Ahah moments. Because charting the days is the only way I know how not to miss the years.

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Linking up today with the lovely ladies at Bigger Picture Blogs.