This Little While We Tended

When day is done

And all its fragments garnered

Into Past’s steadfast, Ever-cast repose

Its battles won

Or lost until tomorrow

When day is done what will dusk’s gates enclose?

When grief and joy

In sudden, strange encounters

Steals our breath or laughter’s lilting zest

What epitaphs

Will engrave twilight’s tombstone

Where daily deaths of bygone ages rest?

When day is done

And all its laymen slum’bring

As This and That by eventide’s side falls

When we dismantle

High-noon’s steel-fist struggling

To rest awhile ‘neath moonlight’s silver shawl

...where pink and gold

Folds Time’s fast-fading fortune

Into a Thing that no one can undo

Will it be worth

The little While we tended

When day is done and our life is through?

© Janet Martin