years of sadness lay ahead
a poem about getting older
Unlike my usual free-form poetry, with years of sadness lay ahead I opted for rhyme, and it sounds…more formal, even though I didn’t pick any specific form. Perhaps I’ll write a villanelle sometime. In any case, I was thinking to myself—at 43 years of age, with teenage children—how many of my older friends are entering actual old age. How I am somehow, inexplicably, entering middle age. How the years ahead will bring us all closer to death. I don’t think it’s necessarily a sad poem, more a meditation on the inevitable. Thanks for reading.
years of sadness lay ahead ~ by erik kain
Years of sadness lay ahead I sense the empty of your bed Purple bruises on your wrist A broken heart, a tender fist All the pews are filled with ghosts The tabernacle’s lost its host And I will linger here a spell But not for long, it's just as well Years of sadness lay ahead. Years of sadness lay ahead For everyone will soon be dead Every friend and family member All will lay alone together Gone their love and pain and toil Resting deep beneath the soil But I will miss them as you'll miss me When we are taken o’er the sea To the West and to our slumber Even now our days are numbered But if you would, let me go first I could not bear to watch the hearse Carry you beyond my reach Come now child, let's walk the beach Sand and sky and earth and sea All will endure long after we Bid farewell to mortal plain But will any gods remain? Years of sadness lay ahead All the elves have journeyed West And we will follow them ere long I do not know what waits beyond Pearly gates or drinking halls Warriors gathered belting songs But I will cleave to hearth and hedge And I will stride along the ledge For there is only one thing certain Soon enough we'll call the curtain. Years of sadness lay ahead. Come now darling, time for bed.
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Other poems from yours truly:
When you're 40 you might miss being 20. But when you're 90 you'll miss being 70.
Fire up a back-beat and you could very definitely rap that :) I used to think about death pretty much every day in my 40s - even wake up at night in a panic sometimes. Now, at 62, despite really enjoying life, I really couldn't care less. It was the same for most of my friends - the ones with more that half a brain at least - it's almost certainly the stage in life when you click over the half way through mark and realise you are mortal..