Time's Thing Called Years...

Her garb is sheer where hindsight’s aptitude

Can better tell the wherefore of her stance

The apple of her eye is the romance

Of Rembrandts' rendered to past’s solitude

And what we did or didn’t do, joy-grief

A tug-of-war within the human breast

As the old year dons her eternal rest

And we hail the unknown to hone Belief

Where the threshold of morrow soon will spill

A canvas pure as God to earthy will

Thought’s time-engrafted reach is far too small

Though we, with fumbling talk try to explain

What mortal knowledge cannot full-attain

…to understand the Giver of it all

Who reigns beyond the tick and tock of clocks

And what we deem as old or new but grace

Unchanging and unfailing; human race

Grapples with strings and moment-soldered locks

Where consequence is the certain capstone

Of everything that ever we have done

With scathing ignorance we hit ‘repeat’

In spite of good intention how we fall

Thus grace alone is our utter all

As old and new mingle; a bittersweet

Vintage of retrospect; then love is blind

And kinder than it was when we were young

And surer of the words upon our tongue

Before the new grew older and the mind

Became a landscape riddled with smile-tears

Accumulated in Time’s thing called Years

© Janet Martin