Graveyard

The old graveyard opposite my house. Pen & ink drawing.

 

'Regrets'.

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If I grow old, if I should be allowed

To live that long, shall I be glad one day

To ponder on the riches I have had?

And shall I smile, feeling my heart flush warm

Remembering the sparkling scented spring

And rosy ripened summer of before,

And dwell with loving thoughts on days of yore?

 

Or else, and this I fear, will I regret,

And look back sighing, full of grief and pain

On wasted days that trickled into years

And fled away, never to come again?

Will I look back with weary age-blurred eyes

That once were bright and amorous and clear

On unfulfilment rife, and failures bleak,

And mockeries of all that I held dear?

Shall I regret the loves that I denied

Which might have blossomed, had I only tried,

And nurtured them, by watering the seed

Instead of hurrying away in fear?

And shall I find, too late, my spoils are poor

Because I didn't dare to strive for more?

 

Shall I be forced to contemplate in shame

The chances lost for which I bear the blame

And know there's nothing left to linger on

Nothing to tell of me when I am gone .

No worthwhile poem nor a snatch of song

No splash of colour on this world's sad grey

But all my dreams and visions fled away.

 

And all my life just nothing more, alas,

Than canvases left virgin blank and white

And lines of poems that I meant to write;

The loves that might have been that I let pass;

The kindnesses unspent, now all forlorn,

And much-loved children never to be born.

 

 

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Copyright Kate Underwood 2008.

Done