Time

The years go by for us

And as I watch them go,

I know not what to feel.

All things have an end

Or so I’m told,

But what is the end?

What is any end?

As I watch them pass

I know, I won’t ever see them again

And yet I will.

The sane ones, sages

Of conventional wisdom

Dictate to us that we should be sad

As all things end,

We mourn our dead and

Weep for what won’t ever weep again.

But some wild thing may ask in defiance of the old rules

“when is an end not an end?”

And, bemused, the wandering wonderer

Answers, plainly, “always.”

They say time passes,

And many wish to return to what once was,

Not realizing that through that very wish

Their minds become their time machines

And a wellspring of emotion

Floods up through their soul,

As if, for just a moment, they were still there.

And were they not?

An end is not an end

When all that was will always have been

Never-changing,

Facts of existence, always existing

In the hearts and minds and souls that were

And are

That will be,

And always will have been.