The Time Has Come
For you to blow on your stillness.
Rise to the height you’re destined for.
Release the “I can’t” shackles.
For too long, you’ve waited,
for opportunities that never come,
saviors who don’t save,
superiors who don’t approve.
Act now.
The world doesn’t pause for self-denial.
If you yearn to travel,
book your ticket.
If you dream of writing a book,
start your first sentence.
Let your critics or inner ego
vent what they will.
Dust off their comments
like cobwebs from your shirt.
The time has come
to shed the shyness of your teenage years,
the ambitions of your twenties,
the exhaustions of your thirties,
the hesitations of your forties.
Now is the time to bloom.
Let the orchestra spring to life,
play the melody you composed—
with you as the main theme and character.
You are the swan on the lake,
the queen and king
of your life.
The time has come.
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Tasting Moments by Pamela Pan (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/tasting-moments-by-pamela-pan/
Pamela Pan is an English professor at San Joaquin Delta College and a writer of poetry, essay, and fiction. She has a PhD from the University of California, Davis, a Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a Bachelor’s from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. A Community of Writers’ fellow, her story “Baba’s Accordion” was published in California Writers Club’s Best of the Best: 2024 Literary Review, and her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Poets’ Espresso Review, Center of Attention, Phases, Great Valley Stories, Voices of the Valley, and Vision and Verse 2024. Her article “Turning Family History into a Historical Novel” is featured on the Historical Novel Society North America website.
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