20 Jan, 2026

Is Your Life a Roundtrip or One Way?_ a short poem by Joanne Z. Tan

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This is  a short poem by Joanne Z. Tan: “Is life One Way or a Round Trip?”

A tiny creek

In the high country of Yosemite

Born of melting snow

Filtered through the clefts of granite

Streaming down a thawing peak.

Dripping, dropping,

Dancing its way

Giggling, laughing,

Roaring, swelling,

Dashing out of the Valley.

Does it know where it goes?

When will it end? And why?

Who owns its life?

More creeks gather,

Into the Merced River.

Onward, forward,

one way journey seaward,

Hither and thither,

torrential, playful,

Reckless, mournful,

Restless, peaceful.

The creek, the river, become the lake,

Waters the crops along the way,

feeds the climbers of the peak.

Matters not

If ever it reaches the sea.

Murmurs, shimmers, under the sun it simmers,

rising water, skyward ascends,

ignites lightning and thunder.

Angelic or devilish, could care less,

Rain and drizzle, descends.

Between Heaven and Earth,

metamorphosis, transcends.

Into the misty fog reincarnates,

the creek, the river, and the lake,

ghosts through the Golden Gate Bridge,

hugs the seedlings on the Marin Ridge.

The fog rolls into the hovering clouds

snow flakes swirl and flutter

down on the peak

That birthed the tiny creek.

If that creek is life itself,

Is it one way or a round trip?

Insignificant, not self aware,

It lives, one form or another,

knowingly or unknowingly

A part of a grand design,

Earthly and finite,

Eternal and divine.

© Joanne Z. Tan, 1/17/2026  All rights reserved.

About the author, Joanne Z. Tan

Joanne Z. Tan is the Founder & CEO of 10 Plus Brand, Inc., a brand strategist, thought leadership coach, and speaker. She helps executives, board members, entrepreneurs, and organizations decode their Brand DNA, create authentic brand identity and content to build brand equity and lead their industries in the AI age. Trained in law and business,  Joanne was a former journalist, and an award-winning photographic artist. She had a liberal arts education from Brandeis University before earning a law degree. Joanne’s passion is to build brands for leaders and their organizations with her analytical, holistic, and strategic design thinking, as well as her artistic creativity. Her coaching emphasizes comprehensive strategies, business modeling, thought leadership and high authority content creation, brand building, culture, teamwork, leadership mindset and resilience. She guides leaders to stand out with vision, multi-disciplinary approaches, and strategies in leading themselves and their organizations. Additionally, Joanne is a poet, writer, and artist.

(About 10 Plus Brand: In addition to the “whole 10 yards” of brand building, digital marketing, and content creation for business and personal brands. To contact us: 1-888-288-4533.)

To read the transcript of this episode as a blog post (Click Here)