Still striding
After everything, it’s still you.
But who are you? It's hard to tell.
Each day brings a new you,
A new face,
New ideas,
Other people,
Bubbling at the edges, ready to change your mindset.
And out go the old ideas,
Old identities,
Things you would prefer to forget
Discarded on the road behind.
The road is long and its confusing.
Sometimes there are accidents and the traffic stops -
And you have to wait to decide how best to carry
on
Sometimes you have to take a new route entirely.
As you grow taller, stronger, wiser,
You learn how to dodge the cars and cyclists and buses
Hurtling towards you, one day you even block them in their path
Raise them on your head
Throw them in a gulley beside the road
Smiling.
These dangers are no concern of yours.
You are new.
You is a new you.
But still, it makes you wonder sometimes
When you look back along the road
At all the parts that slipped from your back
Littered in your wake
Like the skins of a grass snake
Have you lost too much of yourself?
Are you no longer you? After everything?
But it is the road that makes a person
As well as the face and skin you walk in
At this very moment.
Roads cross and overlap and one day they all hit a dead end.
But in the litter left behind
In the person striding forwards
The you is there, after all.
It’s everything
That makes you