Aubade

It’s three o’clock and I’m awake, 
as my mind comes rustling 
just like an old, dried snake;
coming to shed its skin 
of all my past regrets,
the ones I’d like to forget.

Non regret, I could so easily say,
but how to escape from memory;
of when I played in my salad days,
with no care for the path, I chose.
living was to be – until caught easily,
like an insect in amber – perfectly;

when time is trapped in memory,
allowing no part in any forgetting,
only the residue of my regretting
for those lost hours in every day,
the people and places I’ll never see
again, when at the end I cannot stay.

And that old charlatan death, comes
limping up to tap me on the shoulder,
as if I needed any reminder that from
now on I shan’t be getting much older;
waiting for that undiscovered country,
reached via that door I was born for.

Stuck in thinking, waiting for sleep
until sleep took me in again deep,
where a dream house arose within me
opening its door, I entered that city
the abiding city always inside myself
where a child’s voice now called to me;

The voice demanding attention,
for all the lost weeks and years
that all too soon had disappeared; 
impermanent they could not stay,
being lost in the sieve of memory,
where all things soon pass away

But I shan’t waste redundant tears
and leave memories in those years,
by burning the boats of my past 
on the strand of that other land, 
so fair that I trust I shall get there,
finally gazing out of God’s window

Having dreamt upon the net of time
and made my peace with the night
I was recalled to the dawns early light.
And it is only in each day that I live
as best I can while still being alive;
beside me I feel the warmth of my wife
 

© D G Moody 2024