-- The Edge of Our Lives --

John Herlihy

We live our days on the edge of our lives,

Tucked between future and past never to survive.

The future lies before us as inevitable promise,

The past an accumulation of things we miss.

As children, we look to adulthood feeling wonder;

As adults, we look to childhood our feelings to plunder.

The present moment but an edge to fall down from;

The future slips away into the past, to move on from.

Yet that one eternal moment lifts us aloft, on high,

To succeed or fail without ever fully knowing why.

Oh, to jump into the future to know the possible,

To linger behind in the past to recall the impossible.

There, at the edge of our lives, it all quickly happens

In the blink of an eye gone, in ways no one reckons.

There we are, still on our own, sitting on the edge,

Waiting for future to arrive, waiting for its pledge.

- - - - - -

(c) John Herlihy 9 August 2020