What then was now and now was then

Yes, I too was once a little boy bounced on knees with a mother's joy, but now those times have gone away; I've grown to be that man someday. Yet in my mind I still recall those days I thought I had it all, and maybe did, it's hard to say, for childhood knowledge fades away as years turn children into lesser visions of themselves.

Oh sure, I might sound a bit depressed, a holy candle hardly blessed, an old and weathered book of age with maybe just another page. But don't condemn these words I speak, for life is just a thing we seek, yet seem to find it far too late; but then perhaps that is our fate in a world we seldom contemplate beyond our range of vision.

And as for me? Well, I'm almost finished, as it were, and my life is just a fleeting blur of present times that now are past, of forever songs that didn't last, of thoughts and dreams I can't recall, except to say I've had them all, of lusts and hates and joys and fears, of laughter mixed with heartbreak tears, of love I thought would never die, and things I thought I'd never try. Old friends smile and wave good-bye from their cloudy platforms in the sky, leaving me to wonder why I couldn't go along.

Now it's been said that life's a mystery; God only knows it is to me. We live and die, that seems quite fair, a trip that goes from here to there, though there was here and here was there when viewed from almost anywhere this journey leads us to.

You are still young, but that's your fault, a somewhat empty knowledge vault, a fresh new soul with hopes and dreams, a witty child with endless schemes, a song as not yet fully orchestrated to the band. So live your life. Seek out your strife. Go find a husband or a wife and settle down to fleeting days, to age old proven means and ways, to security which comes and lays around you like a noose. It's not so bad, I'll tell you true, there's lots of worse things you could do. But then you'll see that soon enough; for youthful play is always ruff and mountain kings must show their stuff or fall to those who do.

And then, someday, you'll look around and find your own clock winding down. So off you'll go to search the key (that winds the damn thing up, you see). Though I'll tell you in all honesty that such a key has yet to be that winds up old mortality.

A bitter man you say I am to gloat upon your mortal fate? Perhaps. But then again there just might be a motive locked away within my rhyme, a lesson to be learned in time, a lucid word or two to see, a bit of real philosophy in all this pseudo-misery. For sure enough we all must die, no matter how we pray, or try. And yet he who dwells upon the 'why', or lives to stare beyond the sky, or forgets his life is passing by will lose the time that marks the day, will lose the years that slip away, will never come to know the worth of this life we came to know at birth. I mean, let's face it, it's hard enough once death arrives, and what gain to he who simply survives to wish he'd taken up that chance to take a hand and dance a dance, to give forth love without restraint, to help his friends without complaint, to say he truly did his best to ease the pain of all the rest.

Still, the choice is yours, make no mistake, for life is just a birthday cake whose candles tell a tale of time, of years which must be left behind, regardless of what might have been when then was now and now was then.