Finish Lines

“Finish lines”
It says so on this napkin
And what in fact does it mean?
I mean at one moment I wrote it, me,
With hopes and promises perhaps
to write more
And now it threatens to be an empty promise
A false step
and yet another stumble.

I have had these dreams too,
Fully formed and contrived
Curious, colorful
Amusing
meaningful?
And in my slumber
I bookmark them
To remember in the morning
to ponder,
for they are me too,
Only to find that what once was
so bold so brilliant
Has faded into vapor with the dawn
crumbled and spent
until there is no clear memory at all
no recall
just the empty space where something
was
or something might have been.
A thought, an idea
that would have journeyed somewhere
and I would have followed it
absorbed in the world of words
Joyfully?
Painfully?
A page or two
fully fleshed
Signed and sealed
My moment of Zen.

There must be a lesson
Strike while the napkin is hot?

I wonder where I might have gone
if things had been different.