The Sideways Life

As a teenager I read Kierkegaard,
not that I absorbed what I read very well.
But some time after I left the town I grew up in
I understood better than many his most concise quote
-'Life is lived forward but understood backward'.
 
I now live in rural Northern Ireland and now realize
why 'The Troubles' are so misunderstood.
It is not the partisan misreporting of the events,
though that happens. Nor is it because the phrase
'The Troubles' so aptly describes a lack
of a shared narrative history, which explains
why people resist exploring their backgrounds,
with too much vigour lest they, their family
or their 'community' prove culpable for some deed
they don't want to see their part in-everyone goes through that.

The reason is because there are so many small towns,
and small town life is always lived in lower case.
Progress only ever moves sideways.
In the sideways life deeds are smaller than it seem
and repeat themselves, and townsfolk can't look back
because in small towns life does not move forward.