I Didn't Expect

I Didn’t Expect

I didn’t expect to be around this long.
This is living in unimagined years
borrowed from someone who had too many,
an unknown donor long departed
for destinations never stated, repayment
refused with a careless gesture of farewell,
leaving me only with a sense of not deserving
this gifted time to go exploring
in the wilds beyond my allotted span.

I didn’t expect to ever be in a position to
miss the meeting at the millenium arranged
with hippy friends thirty years before
the event, my mortality in estimate
(with all the earnestness of youth and
no real consideration of the snufféd spark)
at best, perhaps another twenty,
thus avoiding any need for excuse or reason -
I am so sorry, unavoidable delays
dogged my path and directed me to other climes.

I didn’t expect to lose a decade here and
a decade there, ten years gone and unaware,
a few more slipping through careless fingers,
and a sudden awakening in another age
with disbelief regarding the altered date.
But it was barely yesterday that I was there,
I do remember, and now you say
that twenty years have slipped away,
unnoticed, blurred and accelerated,
and I am left with the consolation prize
that fifty ain’t so bad, in point of fact,
it’s more a rebirth of understanding.

I didn’t expect that Y2K would be so smooth,
without a glitch or catastrophe.
But I turned my back for just a moment.
a mere excursion in virtuality,
and suddenly twelve years have passed,
the meter speeding like the national debt,
another decade barely begun.
The sands of time through careless fingers fall,
the passing scene, a lightning bolt,
the future, once hidden in dreams,
now everywhere and the merely present.

I didn’t expect to be around this long.
These years are alien to me
and I, a visitor from a forgotten land,
wander through a strange creation,
footprints in the dust of generations.
Speak not of immortality,
of existence extended far beyond design.
It’s the end of being that gives the promise,
the core of meaning in the heart of life,
the reason for our mutual journey.


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