I do not wake the way I used to wake,
With sunshine stretching far;
And all fulfilling time for me to take.
I wake up in the middle of the night;
And gripped by night,
I look, and love the light of every star.
Time is not a watch-band wrapped around my wrist;
Time is not the paper pages of a calendar hanging on my wall.
Time is my life; time is what I have, for too long, too often missed.
But now, I want to hold and feel and taste it all.
"Take no thought for the morrow," said Jesus.
Yea, verily, verily, verily, verily.
Why should I?  I have little hope for a long tomorrow.
All I have for sure is now, today.
I have today--full of gladness, sadness, fear, joy, hope, and sorrow;
With small fading pleasure, and increasing pain paving my way;
Yet despite all despair, I am happy still to be here--still to be there;
My heart fills up with love of life, to fling in death's face, and strongly say:
I love this beautiful, bright, and brief today!
Still, I know: I am losing it all; everything, for me, is going away.
The present gives life's light; but it is a fading gleam.
My memory sings, with bittersweet, sad scary wisdom to say;
The wisdom of sweetly innocent childhood, from a long-ago dream-day:
A fragment from a childhood song, sung blissfully, innocently, ignorantly;
Yet with the truth of life and time and death totally told,
Plainly warning me--
Making me feel myself fade in eternity:
"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream."

==============================
Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Completed on Friday, April 8, 2011  12:40 pm PDT
53 degrees F.  Humidity: 21%  Forecast: overcast
Copyright © 2011 by M.L.P.   All rights reserved