A Sparrow's View
Cloud high I fly and look around.
I view my life that I found
from vistas past and now.
The future before me is opalescent,
filled with the images of past and present.
For around me swirl a billion souls
that have died while I have lead
the life of dreams that history has said
is mine.
Children whose lives were expended
before even their nursery rhymes had ended.
Closer yet are memories I can't forget.
A tender kiss and then she's gone,
our love never saw the morn.
A passing smile that remembers me, I think,
"Who can that be?"
All the past I put away
Dances before me in this somber play.
Life without end or beginning.
We live in the round.
Why else should all these memories
live within me undrowned?
The present, the real, where can they be?
They're inside these visions that float clear and free.
Boy or man, I've never had a vision of God's plan.
Except once in May.
I met a girl who with me stayed.
She kissed me gently so that I could clearly see
that her love would always set me free.
We love so much that we can be these older hearts
that remain as young as we were at the start.
The day we part one then the other
will live in the history of each other.
Children of the past and children to come,
reach for all the things that we have done.
Not to greatness have we ever aspired,
though certainly our life could not reach much higher.
Today in this cloud nest of life,
My greatest gift is assuredly,
My wife.
