After-effects Of Youth

...and just like that-- what ever 'That' might be

Is gathered up and one more month 

is simply history...

I stumble on a wisp of blue and peer through smoke-hued haze

To trace faces and places lost, save to my shut-eye gaze

Where abstract panoramas splay and echo’s shadow lies

Like tatters from a page splattered with tints of paradise

…where once upon the gentle spawn of dawn to dusk we sailed

Blind to the ocean of spent leaves beneath the tides we hailed

Wild with a thirst roused by the durst that fans the dreamer’s fire

And firsts we tasted then, blessed-cursed with notion and desire

…before the firsts that hurt a bit because we realize

The taste of haste is bittersweet and takes us by surprise

While we began becoming nothing like our fantasy

Seasons slipped past our windows like a stream slips to the sea

The berth of Bygone groans beneath the weightless weight of days

I fumble with the hue of blue pressed into yesterdays

Where I cannot impress upon the nonchalance of youth

How swift the green of seventeen is scorched with ageless truth

…or how time’s prow cuts through the Now that rolls across a shore

How looking back, is like a strange mirage of nevermore

How looking forward is an art; the heart soft-torn between

A place mired in memories and what has not yet been

© Janet Martin