Song for a Skip and a Hop

Esther C. Mullowney

'When we are young,
    We are young for such a moment.
    After we are old,
    We are old for so long.

I have seen hold-your-breath beauty,
And young pines grow sturdy ...
Very soon sturdy, and dark green from pale.

    But the church-stone-wall,
    And the nurse in the village
    Were old when I came;
    Will be old when I go.
                        Esther C. Mullowney

             POEM

If I should never see
the things I let my mind remember grow
and nothing take that memory nowhere,
and I should live the death-after-the-fact;
remember, someone dear, what is dear now
when I see you anticipate my act.
If I should never see
the puppet, twitching, talk into the lights
and adored words I made to rocket love
not move nor move the convert in the stalls
to tears I crystallized, remember all
the love I had to give. Intone at nights,
"He has not died whom others' fear has killed
who willed to rear a beauty I had tried."
If I should die-
clumsy, unfinished thing,
the animal-angel only half-way there-
remember though you hold a broken ring
completion was potential in my care.
                          James Law Forsyth