Of Love Well-lived (or Life Well-loved)

Better to be keenly aware

Of all the kindnesses that you bequeath...

Aware…of how you run your fingers through my hair so casually

And trace my face with lines without excuses or apology

Your touch, oh Father Time, is such, that none can tame or duck beneath

Better to be keenly aware

Of all the kindnesses that you bequeath

…in spite of all you steal and how we sometimes feel at loss for words

To spell the knell of farewell rolling through each season undeterred

Aware of heartstrings pulled and tugged in every tender way but loose

While a new generation fills

Our hugs and thrills to rhymes of Mother Goose

Aware of how vital prayer is; where we never know what we’ll meet

Aware of how your kiss, oh Father Time, is both bitter and sweet

And how the stage of middle age runs rife with life’s curious surprise

Aware of how a friend in deed

Is better than anything money buys

Aware that truth won’t change its mind no matter how we twist our pleas

Aware that youth will soon find out time is a mist of memories

And not on their side after all; as they turn into acrobats

Trying to balance hopes and dreams

On tight-ropes of less glam-matters of fact

Aware that our relationship should work in me, as years go by

A gentler attitude and more subdued approach to 'me' and 'my'

Because oh Father time, you are a teacher with uncanny ways

To reach beneath exteriors 

And turn want's restless passion into praise

Aware that we grow too soon auldt and too late schmart, as we become

The generation of old-farts/folk, out-of-fashion dad and mum

Aware that each day is a gift that we cannot afford to waste

But rather gather into hearts

The echo of fond, love-well-lived keepsakes

© Janet Martin

Two things I request of You
(Deprive me not before I die):
8Remove falsehood and lies far from me;
Give me neither poverty nor riches—
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
9Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God.

Prov.30:7-9