Never Impossible
By John Herlihy

Children easily dream of achieving the impossible.
They dare to build medieval castles in the sand,
They chase butterflies to hold them in their hand,
They are not afraid to present themselves as they are,
They reach up into the night wishing to touch a star.

Teenagers fret that everything seems nearly impossible.
“I don’t know who I am,” they whisper, scratching their brow.
They want to believe in themselves, but they don’t know how,
Even their bodies grow in ways they don’t fully understand.
What they try to call their own only feels like contraband.

Young adults assume the attitude that everything is possible.
The world lies at their feet; they just need to walk through,
There is nothing stopping them; they are selected among the few.
If they want to sell something and go knocking door to door,
They have no fear of rejection if that is what’s in store.

Mature adults succumb to uncertainty where all is impossible.
They have lost their wives; their children have grown incorrigible,
Even the grandchildren lose their luster and turn irritable.
The sands of the hour glass now move thru the isthmus sinuously,
You would think that life is just draining away so much more swiftly.

The elderly wearily surrender to a life no longer possible.
Opening on a vista where flowers bloom in winter,
Where you finally live in a place you are not afraid to enter,
Where moments of peace arrive that we strive to remember,
Where forgiveness overwhelms us with feelings that are tender.

On the threshold of death, everything seems to have been possible.
Such people know they had success and failure right from the start,
They suffered love and loss right down to having a broken heart.
They took journeys, suffered sickness, worked fields with a plow,
When the angel of death knocks, they simply say: “Ok, now.”

These are the variations on the limits of the possible and impossible.
The young embrace the possible and think nothing impossible
As we age, the possible slips behind the veil of the impossible
As we mature, the impossible take on the air of the possible.
In old age, we have nothing to lose but life, confirming all is possible.