What is success, and its appropriate measure?

What is won through the work of ages?

A trophy or pride, an achievement or treasure?

What is lost to life through scorched, forgotten pages?

Standing by the grove of a hazy gray

And lost among my twisted badlands,

Watching the leaves blow by like it was yesterday.

The people on my shoulder want to put it in God’s hands.

The challenges by the hours,

And the restless nights,

Are testimony of ours,

As dreams are shaped through toiling frights.

While the self-portrait is a sinner of wrath,

The people on my shoulder want to knock on the door,

To find a dented compass that points toward a path,

Leading toward a place left to me to explore.

So few certainties in a sea of questions

Where the mind lies asleep,

Searching this path for suggestions,

Drowned in noise and buried deep.

The words, they write themselves:

Success is mired somewhere in Life’s droning knell,

On untenably hollow scrolls and dusty threadbare shelves,

While the people on your shoulder urge you not to dwell.

Photo by Michael Soledad on Unsplash