The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

"I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.

When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me.

In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me:

"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."

Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written.

I am not done with my changes."

- The Layers- by the late, American Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz