Distance

[milo]

Distance
 
Long before I knew
what older meant, or
that confidence has little
to do with what you know,
I was like a young sparrow
who gathers twigs and hay
and bits of twisted twine,
only to build her first nest
too high for late spring storms. 
Her eyes caught instead
by the gleam of white capped
mountains far away,
foolishly seeing them
as an easy flight to fly. 
 
It seems time’s quality was  
skewed back then, when glimpses
of other women’s children
never made me cry
and thoughts of my future
were as insubstantial as
the first sight of peaks seen
across a featureless plain. 
 
The time
between then and now
has blurred, and
I’m not sure
when or how I knew
it was the distance
that tricked my eye.
 

What criteria are you using to select these line breaks.  It seems like you are measuring them out like pieces of lumber.