-- An Old Sense of Life --

John Herlihy

Heavily slanted light shaped mystic twilight,

The flames of the day descending into night.

Shadows on the porch would soon be gone,

Gentle wind chimes echoing a doleful song.

An old man sitting in twilight on the porch,

Breathing slowly, his mind holding a torch.

Suddenly, he felt a breeze thru him blow,

An unexpected ease that blessings bestow.

An old sense of life nearly unremembered,

Floods into him, his old age dismembered.

The air of youth and maturity fills his skin,

All of the earth’s wonder filled to the brim.

We may have lived many thousands of days,

A few hundred recalled in inscrutable ways.

Days pass by when we feel just put upon,

Things happen we can’t put our finger on.

In all the unknowing, we know something,

An old sense of a truth that life can bring.

Forgetting the odd premonitions of dying,

For a moment rich, in s new sense of living.

Then and there, alas, the moment passed,

A man’s prime return but can never last.

Enough that the memory returns as bliss,

All is well in the world, with nothing amiss.

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(c) John Herlihy 16 November 2019