Of Imminent Interlacing

My love, the imminence of Past aches mutely on the air

The eloquence of word cannot appease its certainty

And though joy wings its flight it interlocks with sorrow where

Love’s labyrinth of living folds Time’s moments tenderly

Planting, tending and gathering; sweet hours coalesce

In retrospect we cannot rearrange its aftermath

How is it there appears a tear amidst this happiness?

As childhood’s fleeting heaven soon is strewn on living’s path

My love, the blush of morning fills the dark and stricken deep

And only by God’s grace can we embrace its mystic must

The fulcrum of existence joins Past’s everlasting sleep

Yet Hope attunes the heart in passages from dust to dust

My love, we cannot linger long to trace Time’s filigree

The imminence of Past makes precious every gifted breath

For soon a choir of echoes claims this present melody

In its fair, finest interlace of birth and life and death

© Janet Martin 

The other evening at my daughter's bridal shower we all agreed that our own showers did not seem so very distantly past and twenty-some years can disappear exceedingly fast!