-- Borrowed Time --

John Herlihy

From days we were born, time always ticking;

Time’s arrow never stops, our little legs kicking.

We always think of our lives as so much mine,

When we have always lived on borrowed time.

Time broke away from eternity wanting its say;

The past was once future, now the present day.

At birth, we slipped thru a sieve an angel did sift;

Time’s envelope again opened, I arrived as a gift.

As an infant, I could hardly say time was on borrow,

With all the time in the world without a single sorrow.

Childhood was no different, we just ran thru the day;

Wishing it would never end, we had so much to say.

In my teenage years, I squeezed thru a bottle neck;

In knowing nothing, I knew everything, what the heck.

Time was just a glorious future that had not yet arrived;

I simply added up the years as a treasure I had survived.

In mature years, the future seemed ever more present,

Rushing forward into us with feelings ever more prescient.

Suddenly, time began to carry a message I never before knew;

Time moves ever onward, a ship passing where no bird flew.

I treasured my grandfather’s time piece, of time somehow lent;

Now when I opened its shiny exterior, I am reminded of time spent.

The future no longer gleamed there in front of me as a glorious sun;

Dust and cobwebs were now taking hold, a new web being spun.

Finally, the realization takes hold, I am old, what happened;

Fleeting time has outdone itself with events I no longer reckoned.

Things took place, people came and went, life hardly remembered;

The shining days of my youth there before me, I still remember.

But it matters not, the sagebrush rolls, the days turn to twilight;

The sun descends, the horizon blushes red, at the coming night.

And the night will envelope me, then take me to places untold;

Borrowed time will give me one final reprieve, to be happily old.

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(c) John Herlihy 12 May 2020