‘Enjoying the View?’, a poem written after re-reading my poem, ‘GAPS’ eight years later.

I was sorting through my image files and came across ‘GAPS’, a poem I wrote in 2018 when I was sixty-one and about to retire from my job and return from Switzerland to the UK. Here it is:

GAPS

I have spent much of my life navigating gaps.
The gap between the life I imagined and the life I had.
The gap between the life other people imagined for me and the one I imagined for myself.
The gep between what needed to be done and what I want to do.

I ran the gaps like a maze I was sure I would solve at the next turn.
Now was a temporary problem, a test I could pass tomorrow.
I see now that the maze has no centre. The gaps cannot be closed.

I HAVE STOPPED RUNNING.

I'm ready to sit on the top of the maze walls I made and learn to enjoy the view.

The poem still resonates with me but, eight years later, with my seventieth birthday around the corner, I’m not in that place any more, so I asked myself a question: “Are you enjoying the view?”

This is the poem I wrote as my answer.

Enjoying the View?

I am old but not quite done.  

I don’t have to run any more. 
There is nothing I have to prove, nowhere I need to be,  no one I have to become.

Who I am isn’t going to change now,
that race is over,
the zenith reached unnoticed, and the inevitable descent already begun.

I do not want to fall, screaming,  
towards that darkening horizon.

I want to glide on such thermals of joy as I can find, 
and smile because the sun is still on my face.