Those heady blossoms,
I can see them now!
Once, and only one more time,
I lie down
trusting
as one who knows the summer’s day is in my heart again.
How surely can one know
how and when and where and why?
Is it not the case that even
angels
fear to tread
where hope and rays of sunlight die?

Lost to the ages
is that special time in youth
when one has dreams of knowing
that which was and is,
and that which only happened
in the mind of one who never came this way before.
Who can remember
when darkness failed to stir
the dreams of dreamers in a fantasy of dread?
The deepest recess of imagined fear
cannot be the only place where every mind and heart
recalls the emptiness that came before.

Then one day,
I fear the last but one,
it all came tumbling down around the trees in some lost garden.
Oh, to feel again!
Why does a soul shy away from pain
when pain is all that can outlast the years?

If spirits come and go,
wanting,
there is nothing left to keep for any day besides tomorrow.
If only there were fears that bleed
the blood of every joyful and forgotten sorrow,
then could I guess
the end
of the one and only true beginning.
And this world could be lost
without shame,
without the guilt of doubt and tears and wonder.

There would only be the day
that comes both in the past and in the future,
when all will begin again.
New
but also old
for the final time
that is also the first.