Empty Nest
Empty Nest
As cream is churned to butter
So thoughts, once churned, will ache
As all one’s joys and flutters
Succumb like speech to stutters
To hearts that flow like water
Without a thirst to slake.
The winds of change shall ever blow
To lift, and carry on
The growing soul through freedom’s skies
Where each hello and each goodbye
Like tears that fall from loving eyes
Leave home to face the dawn.
To some, the past’s a garment
One casts off into sand
And yet, a skin to others
To rip and tear each strand
But breath – where does it come from?
Are lungs filled with the past?
Or breathed anew each morning
Embraced as each were last?
O Nightingale, your song has sung
Now silence is the bed
That every night begets your tongue
Though mem’ries still they fill your lungs
With words that go unsaid.
But know the gift you once received
That little one that you conceived –
The goals together you achieved –
Now form a song in brand new key
Resounding on amongst the trees
In lands afar, o’er distant seas
You live in them, and they in you
Though both will see a different view.
- A. J. Darkholme (March 2022)