A day will come when I must say goodbye-
Not just to some passing acquaintance,
But to all I know see and fulfil:
To pleasure- felt with joy, and sorrow known with pain,
And so pass on to leave all that was life.
In that strange moment that exists,
Only as a line- between this life and death.
No more substantial than the ocean’s surface:
A huge expanse existing only as the end of atmosphere,
No realer than the instant when the night turns into day.
But if I linger on the threshold of transition
And have the chance to recollect, reflect:
Would I look back and say that I have truly lived,
And licked out every trace from the receptacle of life,
And from its pitcher drained each golden drop?
How will I know if I have truly lived?
By feeling that my appetite is quelled-
That I have tasted of the best of life’s delights?
Or that when I have departed, all that’s changed for good
Is not changed only in the one who has passed on.
Oh, to leave here in some new lives an epitaph-
A trace of joy planted in some empty heart.
Or in the music of some other lives to see
The influence of the master that was I,
So I might never waste the gifts He gave to me.
Mark Humber 16/04/04
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