how i will enter history, not as i imagined, sweet pea

when i look to my future i do not see very far.
but sight has longed failed us in our quest for truth.
here is a future among futures
a single voyage, when the ocean could blow me onto any number of uncharted courses.

i preface, because i am scared to begin,
i introduce, reluctant to dive,
i build up, hesitating:

further up and further in!
what i cry as i march forward into the future, further up and further into this paradise that so often looks like hell this shadowland that is the mirror of all divine.

surely, this future is not about the where, but the how, not the places my feet will take me, but how gracefully they dance along the way. surely this future is also my past and is in every way my present, for this singer believes in the circular nature of time.

but frank, if you have dared me to dream, dream i will- with great courage and unbounded abandon.
this claire graduates from college with a bachelor of arts in literature with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in latin american and latina studies. this claire graduates from college never wanting to stop learning, and enters into the 'real world' as a perpetual student.
this claire has some money saved up from her summer jobs, and uses it to travel. what happens when claire travels? she doesn't know, for that is the nature of adventure.

this claire returns home and appreciates home all the more for having left it. she wants for the one now, and thinks of a poem by Hafiz,
" Where have you taken your sweet song? Come back and play me a tune. I never really cared for the things of this world. It was the glow of your presence that filled it with beauty. "
She sees this glow in the natural beauty she surrounds herself in often, she sees this glow in her lovers eyes, in the caress of the ocean and the embrace of the wind. she reminds herself, it is never to late to have a happy childhood, and won't consider herself an adult until she is fifty.
she likes the word practice and keeps practicing.
she learns and teaches and works and plays and all the time learns how to create self-sustainable wonder in the world.