Spent

A lighter grip on what seemed so sure–slipping away.

Spent feels like loss.

Life and beauty leaked out the crevasses of studies and babies

and music and travel

and loving and words and words and words.

Youth wants so much–wants, plans, dreams, and stretches,

but that far-off possible, like a runner in a tight race, passes as if I were standing still–

and I had so many more dreams to dream.

Flower to flower, sucking life’s nectars, sour and sweet with time, time, time–mine.

But fading worn,

now I sit

spent.

Others, dreaming and reaching, are pushing from behind.

But what if spent is reborn as it blows with the wind?

What if it reproduces more than it ever could alone, by being used up?

Perhaps spent is not loss

but investment.