Because a Person Could Get Lost...

 

The older we grow the swifter years fly!!

This poem began to niggle yesterday evening, on a sunset walk, alone

on a lane that over the years has seen many a youngster racing ahead of me...

A person could get lost while wandering backward through the years

While tracing moments embossed on a tide of smiles and tears

Where seasons slipped through fingers of sunrise and shadow-fall

Till, commonplace we realize, is not common at all

Duty and beauty interlace, weaving life’s aftermath

A person could get lost while grieving bygone’s joy-worn path

Where if we are not wary, we could miss the moment gold

That no miser can bury and no wishful thinking hold

Rather than ruminate about a world that is no more

This day the Lord has made is rolling west from eastward shore

And just as surely as the rest it will slip out of reach

So then, I want to try my best to learn what it would teach

…because a person could get lost in fond futility

While wand’ring backward through a world of glossed imagery

Better to focus on Today, because it is a gift

That all too surely slips away to yester-worlds adrift

© Janet Martin

a few 'wandering backward' shots...