The Rock

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.”