All the people I used to know
appear in photographs these days.
I recognise their faces,
but not the lives they’ve made.

Some are entrepreneurs,
building something from a name.
Some are teachers,
calling every child by theirs.
Some are hustlers with no time to sleep.
Some have gone so quiet
I don’t know where they are.

And me, I am still on the road,
carrying books from town to town,
certain I have found my answer
until another question comes around.

I thought the first degree would tell me
what I was meant to do.
The next one opened other doors
and showed me farther views.
Now every time I reach a summit,
there’s a road beyond the trees.
I tighten up my shoelaces,
tangled up in degrees.

Perhaps I’ll be a professor
with a room full of young minds.
Perhaps I’ll start a company
and build what I could never find.
Perhaps I’ll become a venture capitalist
and bet on someone else’s dream.
On some nights, all three futures
look possible to me.

I wonder whether old friends see me
as someone standing still:
another course, another campus,
another distant hill.
But I have changed along this road
in ways a title cannot show.
I’m learning how much I don’t know
and which questions I can’t let go.

So let them take the paths they’ve chosen.
I hope they find what they came to see.
I’m still moving toward a life
I cannot name completely.
Tomorrow I’ll be back among my books,
with work enough to do,
and a little farther down the road,
tangled up in degrees.