It is the weight

It is the weight

Of years.

The oppression

Of experience,

That squeezes the joy

Out of the morning.

There is hope,

In the song of a new bird,

Building a home,

In anticipation

Of a family.

In need of a nest egg,

When the price

It pays for casting

Its future

On a wing

And prayer

Is balanced, in a slice

Of good fortune.

Like all home builders,

He hopes the sun

Will shine,

And it will mark

His progress.

As spring becomes summer

He will prepare the ground

For autumn

And the bitter

Hard frosts of winter.

He has laboured

Through them before.

On mornings

Too many to recall,

When he thought

He stood

At the head of it all,

He also sang a new song,

It was an

Accompaniment to

The day,

A libretto,

That told a story

Of his life

And he knew all the words.

He wrote them

In his own image.

But that book

Has long been closed,

Put down somewhere,

And sad to say

He has forgotten

Just where it lies.

Odd scraps

Broken words, scattered

In jumbled heaps,

Scrambled together,

His life annotated

And overwritten.

Even the tune

Has been mislaid

And still,

In the distance,

Sounding further away,

With every passing day,

The orchestra

Plays on,

Without him.