the edge

....i feel that i have lived on the edge
even of my own life.
i have made plans enough,
but i see now that i have never lived by plan.
any more than if i had been a bystander
watching me live my life,
i don't feel that i ever have been quite sure
what was going on.
nearly everything that has happened to me
has happened by surprise.
all the important things
have happened by surprise.
and whatever has been happening usually
has already happened before i had time to expect it.
the world doesn't stop because you are in love
or in mourning or in need of time to think.
and so when i have thought i was in my story
or in charge of it, i really have been only
on the edge of it, carried along.
is this because we are in an eternal story
that is happening partly in time?
                           ~ wendell berry
                               jayber crow