As first child then youth I glimpsed you,
Felt you sometimes when the forest wind
Made the trees uneasy.
As wasted years swept past,
With broken dreams and withered love,
So my strengths dulled and yours found dreadful purpose.
Oh death it is the sorrow of my mind,
For serving up a wake,
To encompass all that is to be behind.
Doors their keys so tantalising and unfound,
Good soil to till and plant,
In natures growing ground.
Oh my predator, born of my whimpering life,
Symbiotic union of our destruction.
My friends are close
But you my enemy so much closer.
My eager and inventive mind,
Still stores for me such tasks divine,
But each requires a living soul
To find its purpose so sublime.
Get the behind me inevitable Death,
For I have still so much to strive,
Together with my wondrous Muse
And always knocking, You.
Onward go we three entwined.
Subtle, cunning fate,
As generous as she is,
Has given me a love of loves
To hold me longer from your darkened gate.
Joy fills me but I see you
From the corner of my eye,
The sand glass runs so low
So with its last grain I will die.
Stalked as would a hunter’s prey,
Every sunrise so perhaps,
To be Your arrow’s day.
Now I feel you, daily, hourly.
You have fed me well on life’s sweet feast,
And with each day and sun’s arc pass,
Ever longer is your shadow cast.
Till that day to be my last.
And seated at my elbow I am so driven,
To make a precious purpose of it all.
What at last you snatch with calculated zest,
You’ll find for you no satisfaction,
Yet as together she and I
Your darkness as our swaddling shroud,
In death’s so warm eternity will find our, loving mutual rest.
- Date: 28th December 2010