The Graying of the Night

I wrote this poem after reading the Mitch Albom classic, 5 People You Meet in Heaven.

Written and read to the song Welcome Chris in the film “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

The Graying of the Night

Withering Day, O faded time

Yesterday felt so sublime

The sun was bright, my heart ran fast

But night will come, and refill my glass

Dreaming Mind, again, again

The years go quick my friend, they blend

Distraction came moments ago, it adds to fill a mortals blow

Life will end, it will begin

Love will start, it might rescend

Work will build, the cracks it filled

Pain is there, felt with a glare

Knowledge comes, it leaves me bare

Fear the knowing that it’s near

The night

it comes

I’m scared, I’m scared

For my hair to change, to faded gray

My youth I hold, Like Peter Pan

I long for the, eternal flare

My breath it goes

My soul it slips

Possessions here have lost their grip

I see his face

My body new

Redemption now, reveals it’s true

This poem was written as I began to think back on my first 21 years here on Earth. I began to think about my life in terms of what I was doing on the days that my age changed and realized that almost everything changes in a 3-4 year time frame. This can be a daunting thought as many get to the end of their life and feel that they left an untapped spirit. My comfort regarding this fear is that we have all meant far more to the people around us than any of us realize. The book, 5 People You Meet in Heaven, is about a maintnence man named Eddie. It starts with the end of his life and he enters the afterlife feeling that his life was meaningless…that is until he began to meet his people. Mitch Albom paints a picture of heaven in which the first thing that you do when you get there, is find out why you were on Earth. In the story, God chooses to introduce Eddie to the 5 people that either changed his life or he changed their’s without either of them knowing it. I truly believe that we have an impact far beyond what we could have imagined. Like a butterfly flapping it’s wings that causes a chain reaction, our actions have meaning.