Soapbox

Vespers

The last of the afternoon storms have passed
And the sky begins to clear
To show sunset’s blush in the western sky
Through the cool, rain-washed air.
The earth’s full flagon turns and tips
And another day treads the rim, and slips
Over the red horizon
And into the night’s dark snare.

Only a moment ago, it was morning
Full of the robin’s call,
Coffee and news on the table
But I blinked, and missed it all.
Where did it go, this August day?
How many more will slip away
through my careless fingers,
‘Til green summer is golden fall?

Yesterday was the first of June,
The summer stretched long and new
And bright with possibility,
But twilight comes too soon.
A young man watches the evening sky
And realizes September is nigh:
Can he feel his world tremble with change,
The way I suddenly do?

Surely it was just last week,
A trickle of time’s sand
When he was s stumbling child,
Clutching his mother’s hand:
But even now, his life turns and tips
And quickly, so quickly, his childhood slips
Through my clumsy fingers
And the boy becomes a man.

How easily now matures into then,
And yesterday, long ago.
Seems barely a year since I was 16
Watching the summer go:
Wondering what my future would hold,
How it would feel to ever grow old:
Caught in time’s rushing torrent
And thinking it moved so slow.

I watch a moment longer, and then
I bid this day goodbye
Grieving the many I’ve spilled, unheeding
From my own life’s short supply.
As again the shadow of change does fall
I wish I had better treasured them all:
The day, the summer, the childhood,
The crimson August sky.