Sometimes I think I am still growing up

Though my boyhood has passed me by

Like something, a leaf perhaps, carried

Down an empty street in an empty town

By a restless breeze that takes what it

Can, and covets what is left behind.

How quickly it passed, that immortality

Just an illusion now but a reality then, a

Place eternal where nothing mattered but

Everything had purpose, fleeting summer

Days that went on and on but never lasted

When the stars came out to wink at fireflies.

Ah, but those nights lingered too, crickets

Playing out of tune but keeping time just

The same, though I didn’t know it then and

Wish I could forget it now, counterpoint

To a distant ticking that was lost beneath the

Bittersweet regard of my own beating heart.

I can bear to write no more of this, but will

Hold it close because what I was has made

Me what I am, and like that empty wind

I also covet what is left behind, the leaf

I chase but a single page in a book I

Once thought would never be completed.

END

“Covet”