A Pilgrim’s Progress

The pilgrim and their passage throughout the days,   

Is synonymous with the calm ebb of progress,    

Though they cannot help but find it a maze,    

Pushed indelibly forward are they by the process.    

Overwhelmed at joy or stilted in sorrow,   

As the days attend each their way,   

Cast is mind ever forward to the morrow,    

Despite the feat and heartbreak that lay.   

Reflective sighs for better days before,

Suddenly pause’s made along life’s evolving path,

For times when things involved thrills galore,

When memory contained thought to laugh.

Then there are those hesitating to reflect,

Scared to obstruct journeying for despair,

Damage aforementioned – abuse and neglect,

Still, theirs is the passage – their task to bear.

Linear fashion is the pilgrimage’s nature,

Minute acceding to minute, time ticking on,

Participant’s vision provides their stature,

Braced to endure and matters to overcome.

Year upon pleading year breath is breathed,   

Lengthening the journey is the pilgrim’s aim,  

Until call is made, life to be relieved,  

Making the most of the God-selected game.

***

Commentary on the Poem

Life is a pilgrimage that requires progress; a rejection for growth just breeds misery.  But whether we’re forwards or backwards in mode—growing or receding—life is a mystery... the whys and wherefores.

Each day along the pilgrimage brings unexpected challenges and joys.  We never quite know what we’ll get.  Still, tomorrow is pilgrimage’s horizon and hopes intercede powering our means—the manner of going on.

For the many, life never quite matches what’s gone before.  The ‘good old days’ wither in nostalgic grief as they’re honoured in our memories... if only we could redeem sense of them.

Countless thousands have their stories of developmental horror.  Whether abuse or neglect; there’s an instinctive and understandable reticence to revisit sore times.

The linear fashion of the pilgrimage makes at least that one part predictable.  This helps.  With it we plan and against that backdrop hopes mount and joy features as an occasional friend.

No matter how hard life’s been or is, the myriad majority are clinging to it—rarely are the ones (though there are millions too many) perjuring life for suicide.  Everybody else it seems wants to live as long as they can, and those that do suicide found it momentarily too hard.

Parting Caveat

Beyond the expanse of a solitary person’s thought there’s so much within the scope of pilgrimage.  Only so much can be handled in one chunk.  The essence of this message is that we’re to marvel at the creative enigma that is one person’s life.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.