The Best that We Can Hope For...

Since you must depart

I will let you go

I keep within my heart

Love’s very best, you know

For time can never steal

The pictures that I see

A cherished phantom reel

Of precious memory

Then, when the night wind howls

Spurring the embers glow

When winter’s heaving jowls

Spew blasts of ice and snow

There by the fire’s verve

I’ll re-play tenderly

The moments I preserve

In precious memory

We cannot force the hand

From which life’s moments spill

Soon autumn’s sanguine land

Succumbs to winter’s chill

Soon babies learn to crawl

Soon they are twenty-three

The best that we can hope for

Is a precious memory

© Janet Martin