Old Ways

By Dan Mulhollen

With age,
an addiction to certainty;
Timid and frail,
Needing definitions,
structure,
We set boundaries.
Willing to surrender ideals,
willing to abandon dreams,
All for a fleeting whiff
of the delusion that is security.

This is not who I was.
Then I embraced all my "what-ifs",
actually hoping fantasies
would turn into experience.

Yet hope is betrayed,
those little traitors
lurking within us.
We hear their pleas,
and if we heed their words,
slowly, inextricably,
They devour us from within.

So is this who I am?

I look back
wondering, are all those old dreams dead?
Might they be revived?
Are those old ways
illusions,
or a facet of who I am?