“There comes a time”

November 2026 Poetry Month, Day 12

White Rock, one of British Columbia's longest piers

“There comes a time”

There comes a time
in everyone’s life
when you realize
that life is turning out
differently than you expected,
sometimes so different
it’s highly unrecognizable
even in the light of day.

The idyllic life morphs,
haphazardly at times,
into challenges
and vague references
to Sisyphus and his boulder,
sometimes Huck Finn
floating the Mississippi,
or even Pip
and his lonely life
on the marshes,
with or without Estella
or Miss Havisham.

Sometimes, even the weather
symbolizes our moods
of storms, downpours,
snow blanketing the earth,
hurricanes, tidal waves—
at times the sun is shining
after one of the torrential tempests
or quiet time along a sandy beach
with lapping waves and sea birds
passing by or sunsets or nights
with stars lighting our way
along the path of life.

Perhaps, it is these times,
we relish the most—
as the storms and tumults subside,
feeling at peace for those brief moments,
knowing that’s the rest we want,
we desperately crave
along the along the way
that leads us onward and ever upward.