For Maia

How precious is a lifetime.
How precious is a day.
How precious is the moment that
So blithely slips away.

In a day, a flower blooms.
It opens petals wide.
And in a day, it drops them
As it bends and wilts and dies.

A child is like a flower
In the soft years after birth.
Living life by moments,
And measuring not her worth.

And as the years continue,
She hears an added song,
Loses child’s awareness,
As she learns to not belong.

Anticipating differences
Where once there was but whole,
Allowing only glimpses
Of her being, essence, soul.

Why is it a surprise
When our days become our years?
The child now grown and lovely
Tends her own child’s fears.

Concealed within, her glowing spark,
A well into the springs
Some meaning she’s sensed hidden
‘neath accomplishments and things.

With the passing decades,
Her petals start to fall,
She senses herself finite,
And moving toward the wall.

What once she took for granted,
Then sensed in her child’s zeal,
Now seems just a shadow,
And she wonders, was it real?

She longs to cling fast,
Hoard the precious moments that she lives,
When all she has to hold them
Is the reverence that she gives.

With reverence she remembers
Life is boundless, sweet and new,
That each moment is a lifetime.
And yes, the last one too!

Chance events remind us
That we are in the stream,
That life is wholly flowers,
And reality the dream.