By The Changing Tide

16.1.2020

Open the window to a time

When fears and tears were only words.

Scrabble through the walls of mist,

To arrive at a land that doesn’t exist.

Flip through the pages of two decades,

Stir the dregs of times forgotten,

And the laugh shells that the tide brought in.

Unravel the years of thoughts, and smiles

Balled up into forgotten paper,

Thrown unheeding into silent attics

Where even its echoes whisper.

Hang the twine up on the walls,

And catch the laughter before it falls

And splinters into shards of glass.

Knot the ends of unforgotten times

And hide them in the hems of rhymes

So that they tinkle when you walk.

Finger the frayed ends of the threads

Of all the disheartening things anyone said.

Tie the kind words together

And prise the songs from each other.

Piece the poems side by side

And stitch a quilt so wide and fine,

That each thread glimmers line by line.

And lay it out by the new wave

For the changing tide to take away.

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This was written as a reflection on the eve of my 20th birthday. I had a few hours to go and way too many memories to reconcile with, ideas to ponder over and words to say. There was also the awareness that I was saying goodbye to not only a whole year of my life, but a phase. And phases are strange things; before you know it, one has passed and before you can prepare yourself, you have been swept into another one. Much like the changing tide.