The old man has been drifting in time a lot, today.
“I want to thank you for inviting me down to visit you,” he says.
I say, yes, it’s been a good fourteen years.

And in the yellow living room
I feel those years in colored layers,
the golden joys, their complicated weavings
with things I was regretting then
and things I would regret later,
the efforts of my striving
for things that had great merit
and others that, perhaps, were ill advised

The times of clearing
where previous intentions
washed like watercolors
into pools of indistinct brightness,
with lines I sketched on them
and called learning

The fleeting pride, the taut hopes,
some realized, some still waiting,
buried under years
of leaf fall, winters, springs

Yes, it’s been a good fourteen years,
bright and dark, and rich in all I can imagine.
And the goodness will continue,
each unfinished thing, in its time, redeemed,
all the blessings brought to full view.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 28, 2016