Eternity in My Time
By John Herlihy

Eternity has come to visit me in my time,
Giving me a sense of how it can be mine.
Eternal love, eternal life and eternal bliss,
Recalls an endless eternity of all I do miss.

Eternity found in a thimble, an eyeless stare;
Eternity as white light in the sun’s harsh glare.
We can find eternity in a treacherous friend;
It seems like an eternity to wait for the end.

Forever invades a moment to become real;
Never gives up its ghost to become unreal.
Forever patient, forever sad, or forever lost,
Eternity may enter any moment at great cost.

Dawn’s beginning heralds the end of the day;
The four seasons come and go, but never stay.
The bud opens its eyes to become the flower;
But closes them again with the twilight hour.

Timelessness steals into moments unaware,
Purifying all the minutes like a silent prayer.
Of eternal solitude and eternal loneliness,
A far cry from the beatitude of eternal bliss.

As long as I live, eternity seems kept at bay,
Beckoning on the horizon with nothing to say.
But suddenly there it is with its endless hours,
Time immemorial to be claimed as only ours.

Time only hints at the wonder of eternity’s bliss,
Little comfort in the eternity of all that we miss.
Blessed and glorious, the most ancient of days,
We accept the mercy of God’s inscrutable ways.