'Once-Had-Beens'

   

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Someday life’s little 'bursts of bad'

And vexing twists that drive us mad

Will be a blip upon time’s screen

And nothing more than ‘once-had-been’

These galling interviews with woe

Life's roller-coaster high and low

Are brief eighth-notes of in-between

What will be, is, then ‘once-had-been’

Nothing alights never to leave

And joy waits past this thing we grieve

Beyond Time’s winter wafts spring-green

While now we shape its ‘once-had-been’

Thus within our bosoms we

Cling to this gladsome guarantee

‘This too shall pass’; clocks intervene

Nudging each day to ‘once-had-been’

God, help us not to lose our way

But teach us how to live each day

Committed to its moment-mien

Before it falls to ‘once-had-been’

© Janet Martin

My friend is having a ‘when it rains it pours’ stage in their family. We tried looking on the bright side by remembering eventually this time will be a little blip in their lives of what once had been...so we went skiing with her little boy (the one I baby-sit;), had an out-door picnic, albeit a shivery one and tried to imagine everything warm and green instead of cold and white!