Song for a Skip and a Hop

'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