I Walk In Their Path

In anticipation of this Remembrance day, I prepare to find my place and take witness of today’s gathering. Those here are younger ones now and those I once knew have found shelters away from this earthly domain. Increasingly I am part of an older generation connected only to past voices. Today I feel an old lion…the roar not as deep and my stance not as firm.

This was to have been a day when images and words were to flow easily from the colour instances of remembrance. Reds and blacks, the grace of carried flags and those at half-mast. Yet the pictures were not easily found nor the words did carry and I was left consumed by the where-ness. Where were the pictures? Where were the words?

I had started earlier than today. Some weeks back I found words and song, the shoulder of Orion…until the stars are all alright. And though I came back to these passages often, I recognize that the whole of them was not for today but only their fragments. And then, only then, later this night I found, from an unlikely moon, the voice of an old lion…never too old to roar or to stride.

I will continue to find these past voices to place them with images and words. To walk in or beside the steps of others, To read their names, to accept their clues. I have heard their voices to continue…Though I too have become an old lion, grey at my temple and at my jaw – I have spoken with the tongue of angels…finding courage and meaning when I walk in their path.