On a Scroll Preserved
By John Herlihy

My own destiny has now come and gone;
My face an aging parchment, my hooves shorn.
Once a freckle-faced, carrot-headed youth,
Sculpted lovingly by the Divine Hand forsooth.
From infancy to manhood as a work of human art,
Until old age makes one last journey before I depart.
This young life that has never been lived before;
This old life that will never be lived forevermore.
Destiny’s reign leads us now to the stopping pole,
Now given back to life anything I may have stole.
The flaming red hair now gone, leaving a shiny dome,
As slick as icicles and shiny as ice, finding a new home.
I still recognize within me the unseen soul of myself,
Illusions of living now stashed away on an upper shelf.

Replaced by visions of eternity, an old age compensation;
The future life of the soul with promises as dispensation.
Truth to tell, we have lived with this vision all our lives;
I made many mistakes but this idea had no compromise.
Living on earth in the shadow by the light of true vision;
We give color and contour to a soul that has no division.
Our thoughts have come to be the ink with which we write;
Our actions the felt pen that writes down destiny’s plight.
Do we fashion our lives through the choices that we make?
Do the roads followed create the destiny that we must take?
What am I but a man molded and shaped by a surer Hand,
Living a destiny, on a scroll preserved, in an ancient land.
Guidance lies in the mystery of life and the questions asked;
The answer lies in living destiny’s promise as a noble task.

In future years, should my scroll be unearthed from ground;
Let my epitaph be known: Though once lost, I was finally found.