The poet gazes afar as the two slowly walk,
Through a strait gate palm in palm they talk.
Now I am ninety-nine and you not younger dear,
Friend to friend, goodbye without fear.
Time to leave them all: sanctuary abode round the corner,
Old dreams of love and whimsy bliss that can not be
Reconciled with the ultimate Initiator and Sustainer of life
Artful tiled floors, Christmas tree, green attic, Jacuzzi in style, red waving palm, sunken secret garden, tinted glass canopies, white-washed walls, yellow brick steps and all.
Yes, we seem to have lived here all our lives,
Season to season, rain and draught, tears and laughter, colors and paleness, words and silence adrift as each decade drives.
I always liked to stay up all hours of the night,
Sitting alone by the green attic window star-gazing into the dim gentle light,
Crafting, designing, evaluating, fantasizing what mattered then,
A future of retreating retiring reviving resurrecting right.
Hearing perhaps a faint sobbing in your sleep,
Urging we must leave and sail across the vast blue deep.
Looking for a blue hope bird in springtime great beyond,
Never again shall we be contented with mere earthling’s song.
Hence in this poem I now give all to time,
To our new home the young country soon we come.
sound mind journal 