Oh, What A Life

Discovery makes new the ancient; what a life is time

Like a moss-covered milestone on which eager children climb

Clueless at how far hours reach; or what its gate unbars

We, fresh-faced foreigners, stumble-tumble toward the stars

And earn the song that yester’s young-at-heart learned through Time’s strife

Singing like they, the blue and gray of oh, oh, what a life

The take-and-make of moments is a sacred bread to break

Its crumbs of living scatter pink across dusk’s fired lake

Rhapsody and soliloquy, ballad, sonnet and prose

Unfolds in new-old poetry like fathoms of a rose

And because we are learning often we forget to look

Until its petals are pressed between pages in Past's book

Time’s tapestry of touch and taste haste’s blue through us; the grass

Once green is brown and brittle where the little hours pass

Like shadows first before us then behind us; solitude

Is often-times the playground for life’s teeming echo-brood

...where we, tongue-tired beam and dream dreams, rosy-cheeked and rife

Still singing on time’s way its melody; oh, what a life

The eyes of true love, darling, never utter condemnation

But buoy our want and will toward time’s obligation

And we would all be crying without cause for joy, but oh

Oh, what a life; the knife that wields in winds that brutal blow

Melts in the hand of Time’s forgiveness; winter turns to spring

Oh, what a life; oh, what a song Time's children learn to sing

© Janet Martin