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THE COMING OF AGE
Wrinkled like a dry autumn leaf
You dimly reminisce past pleasures
The long warm summers
Shadows flickering softly, sweetly
The hum of a distant lawnmower
The song of a honey bee
You feel a budding strength
Bloom to life within you
Like a pure pink apple blossom
Then as you feel the strength
Surge forth
Your young heart awakens
You stare into a mirror
That reflects only an ageing shell
A soft twinkle in your eye dims
Suddenly you weep, chest hurts
Longing to be back across the border
Into childhood, irresponsible
Like a fresh young epiphyte
In a dripping rainforest
Heart clutches savagely
Onto what is pleasurable
Like the seeds of a thistle
Your time carried briskly forth
You ponder in reminiscence
As it disappears over the horizon
As sudden as an Australian sunset
Yet the twilight is long
...It breaks your heart
To think of those that have gone before
Unlike the sun
They will not accompany dawn
Love was within each soul
But the tombstones are all the same
Like labelled preserves
Lost in an orchard ... |
