Nearly there

Oh death damn your scythe,

I can’t keep jumping up and down,

putting off that fateful day when you will catch me unawares.

To wind up my days on earth and dream no more of all those aspirations nearly fulfilled,

what a joke!

Why must we aspire to be more than just ourselves;

to love and laugh without a care,

but seek to be that hero or even knave that gets some notoriety?

Can I cross that bourne from which no traveller returns

without regrets for that which I did not do?

Surely as I pay that ferryman I can be satisfied

that what I made of my life was sufficient without yearning for yet more?

Yet that is not in our nature, is it?

I want to live again, laugh again and not keep crying in my soup. As I write these words I want not praise or acclamation

but just to watch one more sunrise,

wonder at a cloudless sky, ponder over a starlit night,

talk back to the birds as they chatter to me

and look at, talk to and touch with loving hands

all those who have meant so much to me.