11TH June 2018
Years slip by
another birthday comes along – gives pause
69, no milestone
but I can only look forward or
back –
face bereavement and loss on either
track
and fear, that I might be left alone.
Have hope and longing given way to dread
of how I will fare in the years ahead
which must bring decline by nature’s laws?
Yet I live in the present – this minute, this hour
and treasure life’s pleasures, enjoying how
the changing seasons return, expire.
Mid-June – I sit in the late evening light,
the gathering dusk falls soft and slow,
eclipses the dying day’s fading glow.
I embrace the darkness, and even now
all is not quiet.
As bats flit soundlessly overhead
voices and laughter drift in from gardens
on the warm summer night.