The Unbroken Chain

We are but a tiny link on the chain of life

We walk where ancient footsteps fell,
Through shattered stone and ruined shell
And place our hands where hands once lay,
A thousand lifetimes swept away

These walls have heard a newborn cry,
Have watched both kings and beggars die
Have sheltered love and witnessed war,
And seen what we weren’t living for

Someone once stood beneath this sky,
And watched the same white clouds drift by
They loved, they grieved, they dreamed, they feared,
Then slipped through time and disappeared

They held their children close at night,
They gathered ’round the firelight
They wondered what the years might bring,
And dreamed of lives they’d never see

They never knew that we would stand,
Among the echoes of their hands
And trace the stones that they had laid,
Long after all their names would fade

Someone first learned to summon fire,
And someone dared to wander higher
Someone placed a seed in earth,
And watched the waiting ground give birth

Someone looked toward stars above,
Then turned back home to those they loved
Someone shaped a spoken sound,
And passed its meaning all around

Someone made the first small mark,
To keep a thought beyond the dark
So words could travel past a breath,
And somehow speak beyond our death

Each generation took its place,
And carried forward all our race
Their wisdom, failures, joy, and pain,
Each one another living chain

And every choice, both great and small,
Became the road beneath us all
For we did not arrive alone - 
Our lives were built on ancient stone

An endless line of beating hearts,
Has carried us from distant starts
Through famine, flood, through fire and flame,
Until the world became our name

And farther still, before mankind,
Before the first awakening mind
Life crawled from seas beneath the sun,
And every ending carried on

Through countless forms, through endless years,
Through instinct, hunger, love, and fears
An ancient thread refused to cease,
And wound its way through every piece

Until somehow, through you and me,
The past awoke with eyes to see
And all those lives that came before,
Still breathe within the lives we bore

Perhaps that’s why old places feel,
Like something time cannot conceal
As though the stones remember when,
The world belonged to other men

We touch a wall - and for a while,
Across the centuries and the miles
Two lives that never could have met,
Are somehow briefly connected yet

But stranger still, the chain goes on,
Long after you and I are gone
For somewhere in a distant year,
Another pair of feet draws near

They’ll walk among what we have made,
Through remnants time has not erased
And wonder who once stood right there,
Who breathed this long-forgotten air

They’ll ask what frightened us at night,
What made us laugh beneath the light
What dreams we carried, whom we knew,
And if we wondered about them too

We spend our lives looking behind,
For those whose blood became our kind
Yet rarely turn our eyes ahead,
Toward those who’ll walk when we are dead

For we are not the final page,
Nor merely watchers of an age
We’re history breathing here and now,
Though we may not yet understand how

We are the ancient ones to come,
The distant voices yet unsung
The names that time may wash away,
The yesterday of some far day

So when I stand where ancients stood,
I think perhaps they understood - 
That life is borrowed, brief, and strange,
Yet something always stays through change

A hand once placed upon a stone.
A life once lived and once called home
Thousands of years -and still remains,
One link within an endless chain

And someday, when our time is through,
The future will come searching too
And standing where our footsteps fell,

They’ll touch our world - 

And wonder who we were as well

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I would love for you to check out my recently published book, “Between Then and Now”, a collection of 60 poems written between the ages of 15 and 39, it’s currently being sold at Amazon. It’s also available on kindle unlimited.

Stay tuned for my book “Between Now and Hope.” It will be released sometime in 2026. It’s a collection of poems that focus on making this world a better place.

Thank you for taking the time to read my words.