Adult's End

Ah those high heady heartbrimming days
When wonder met with wonders at every gaze
And the Fair Folk winked and laughed among sunlit trees
Dancing in the spirals of autumn leaves

          They said things would change
          When I became a man.

The change crept upon me like a slow
But certain winter
The cold winds aged me beyond my years
Where were the Fair Folk now?
Walled out of my world by reason
I missed them so,but more
I missed the world in which they lived
And the me who saw them there
So this was adulthood?
This is being a man?

Life was hard with so much understanding
All neatly boxed
My heart just a piston
But filled with a strange ache
Which ached and ached and ached
Throughout that long grey land.

Lately I thought I saw a face
Grinning in the trees,
Then a commotion rattling the leaves
Something mischevious was beckoning to me
More and more it was all around
Then I realised the truth,He
Who I supposed dwelt solely
Upon some transcendent shore,
Someone much fairer than the fair folk
Had smiled down in a thousand summers,
Was sparkling in each raindrop,
His grief in every tear.
He was bursting out of His creation 
Eager for me.

So I finally took His hand
And at last I learned to play
I took my first steps as a man
As I became a child again that day.
                                                      Wilf 10/1998