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Seasons
Spring in your step, the way to school
Is filled with conjured danger
You never see the hidden fool
You always trust the stranger
Learn and grow is what you do
Playing by the book
Decide which friend's to go to
By what their mothers cook
Summer days fly past so quick
You bask in golden glory
Job, wife, kids come fast and thick
The while you write your story
No time to sit, or think, or plan
Doors open if one closes
Rush to impress, to be a man
Forget to smell the roses
The Fall can come in just one night
You may not hear it coming
But wake in sweat a dreadful fright
Your world no longer humming
For quietly drop the leaves of life
And soon the tree is bare
The kids leave home, and then your wife
Remembered in your prayer
Winter comes to end the year
With snow upon the rooftop
Your pace, though slow, is without fear
Your ticker's in the pawnshop
Now spring, and youth, are both long past
And rest your sole desire
Those schoolday friends are joined at last
Your place saved by the fire.
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Synopsis
As with so many of my poems, the idea for this came from nowhere. It's not a new idea: that one can draw a parallel between the seasons of the year and the seasons of one's life. In my youth, although this is perhaps not so true today, life was simple. Back in the early 60s, the road to school could be walked in safety - the only dangers the ones we imagined were lurking in the woods, or in the tunnel that carried the stream beneath the road. If someone told you something, you took it at face value, and it was likely enough to be true. There were no "hidden fools" by which I mean, those who play games with words, saying one thing cleverly disguised to mean something you can trust in. There was no 'stranger danger.' Our only responsibility was to learn and grow. And behave. I've used "playing by the book" in that context, but it also hides a double meaning: that we often played footie on the fields on the way home, our books lying on the grass pretending to be goalposts.
The summer of your life is when you make your mark - or "write your story." And all too often, this is a time of grasping and climbing to "make it" with no regard for the beauty of life that is all around you. What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? Some of the most compelling words ever written, and most of us do not heed their wisdom. The measure of your success, your ability to "be a man" is in the size of your pay cheque, your house, your car. Ephemera. Empty trinkets.
When autumn comes to people who have spent their lives amassing such trinkets, it can really be a "Fall." Almost overnight, the younger grabbers can steal away your share of the loot, or the limelight, leaving you in a quiet backwater with nothing to do but wonder where it all went wrong. Your world is definitely not humming now, or if it is, it's simply because it has forgotten the words. Your kids have left home, having grown up without you to read their bedtime stories because you were spending another late night at the office, missing their school plays, their fledgling triumphs and tragedies. Now they have lives of their own, are they repeating your mistakes because you never had the time to sit with them and share the lessons of your life? The love of your life, the beautiful woman you shared your dreams with, has gone. Passed away. A lifetime of running the home and juggling her own career whilst you were collecting your trophies wore her out and she's preceded you to the last trump. In your thoughts every day, your silent prayers, you wish you'd spent more time with her but of course it's too late. Your tree of life is bare.
In the winter of your life, grey hair the snow on your rooftop, your frailty slows your step but your lifetime's experiences give you, finally, the confidence to walk through what's left of your days fearing nothing. What have you got left to lose? It's not just your pocketwatch in the pawn shop: you've pawned your heart too, on so many levels. And when you eventually come to rejoin your wife, you find that all your old mates have kept you a place in the warm where you can sit and reminisce about the good times you had when life was simple. When you were a child.