In the gloaming along a creek out the way,
I met a boy alight a rock.
Secure in the swaddle of innocence
he bore no remnants of yesterdays
no illusions of tomorrows.
Resting in the present,
the boy supped the succor of childhood.
His heart fixed on the fires of spring,
he drank in the clarity of cold blue sky
and savored the bliss of his place in the cosmos.
He slipped into the water,
not to stop or go speed or slow
but only to drift on his dreams.
In the gloaming along a creek out the way,
I met a boy alight a rock.
A shadow flickered across his eyes
as we shared a glance through that window in time.
He knew the boy I saw was not the self-conscious boy
too busy living in the next age,
missing countless moments that were his to relish,
moments in the reality of his own life
not someone else’s.
Now in elder years afflicted by opportunities
forfeited and time squandered,
I grieved in my reverie, musing who would I be
if what could have been would have been.
“It matters not, you can begin anew.”
the boy hailed across the years.
“How can this be?” I asked.
“For all who desire to pause
the rock is always here,
cleansed in each day’s dawn.
It lies between your
‘I should haves’ and your ‘I wishes.’
You think of it merely as a rock;
we know it as Grace,
the daily gift of beginnings.”
