Affirmation

Growing older we then find everything           
by ageing we should then all know it,             
but not ever when young and growing,              
or maybe glimpsing it off times when                  
an older person we know then dies yet           
still we play in our summers sunrise as              
still ignorant and maybe content until                
perchance we may marry, hoping not                     
for ill but in such we become fulfilled,               
until we see scattered on that shore                         
upon which as a seeming cruel jest                                 
a close friend drops upon that strand.                    
Then past middle age we find a new                       
love, hoping by which we will not die,        
while old friends still give us the lie                 
and yet persist in not estranging us                               
from what our conceit can’t withstand,                   
by the continuing friendship which is                    
now the only why which answers all                     
the nagging questions our soul despises:           
that for all the hopeless years we’ll 
still puddle our feet in the ponds edge 
and yes, we can affirm what's still fitting,                  
to be delicious and yet to lose everything.

© D G Moody after Donald Hall.                        

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)