I’m always running ahead of my life,
The way when we walk you are always
Three, fifteen, forty steps behind
Taking a picture, or inspecting
A bottlebrush tree, a cornice, the sea
As it breaks white on the striated rock,
As though I can’t dare look, and
I’m always running away from myself
The way when we walk you are always
Asking me to slow down, and what will happen
When one of us dies, and, if it’s me first,
There’s no one’s back in our photos anymore.
Copyright © 2015 by Robert Polito. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 11, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.