Song of Life

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  • Dream
  • ,
  • Death
  • ,
  • Time
  • ,
  • Life

    Song of Life


    I do not wake the way I used to wake,
    With sunshine stretching far;
    And all fulfilling time for me to take.
    I wake up in the middle of the night;
    And gripped by night,
    I look, and love the light of every star.
    Time is not a watch-band wrapped around my wrist;
    Time is not the paper pages of a calendar hanging on my wall.
    Time is my life; time is what I have, for too long, too often missed.
    But now, I want to hold and feel and taste it all.
    "Take no thought for the morrow," said Jesus.
    Yea, verily, verily, verily, verily.
    Why should I?  I have little hope for a long tomorrow.
    All I have for sure is now, today.
    I have today--full of gladness, sadness, fear, joy, hope, and sorrow;
    With small fading pleasure, and increasing pain paving my way;
    Yet despite all despair, I am happy still to be here--still to be there;
    My heart fills up with love of life, to fling in death's face, and strongly say:
    I love this beautiful, bright, and brief today!
    Still, I know: I am losing it all; everything, for me, is going away.
    The present gives life's light; but it is a fading gleam.
    My memory sings, with bittersweet, sad scary wisdom to say;
    The wisdom of sweetly innocent childhood, from a long-ago dream-day:
    A fragment from a childhood song, sung blissfully, innocently, ignorantly;
    Yet with the truth of life and time and death totally told,
    Plainly warning me--
    Making me feel myself fade in eternity:
    "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
    Life is but a dream."


    ==============================
    Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
    aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
    Completed on Friday, April 8, 2011  12:40 pm PDT
    53 degrees F.  Humidity: 21%  Forecast: overcast
    Copyright © 2011 by M.L.P.   All rights reserved

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    Musicmynded1 commented on Song of Life

    04-14-2011

    Love everything about this, especially the paragraphs on time.

    Teardrops commented on Song of Life

    04-08-2011

    You seem to still have the gift of humor and the poem reflects that great write Maerie

    To have great poets there must be great audiences too.

    Walt Whitman, American Poet (1819-1892)

    PoetWithCancer’s Poems (224)

    Title Comments
    Title Comments
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    Seasonal Ring 1
    My Thanksgiving 0
    God's Word 1
    Under the Date Tree 1
    A Few More Times 1
    Divine and Diabolical World 0
    Summer-Brief 2
    Seasonal Ring 0
    Shakespeare's Birthday and Death 0
    Special Brian 0
    I Remember Brian 0
    Light of Life 0
    Pain Has Defeated Me Today 1
    The Old, Old Words 0
    Home Is Where the Heart Is 0
    A Sad Contemplative Christmas Today 0
    Moments of Memory; In Memory of Moments 0
    Sun and Rain, Joy and Pain: I Miss My Friend Brian 0
    Dehumanized and Clinicized--N
    OT
    1
    Not Full 0
    Love, Loss, and Lennon 0
    Dying Dream 0
    Brian's Pure Love for His Lady 0
    Two Loved Ladies Undergoing Surgery Now 0
    The Masks Fall Off at Midnight 1
    Prime of Life 1
    Low Energy and Less Time: And Too Many Things to Do 1
    Happy Veterans Day, Brian 0
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    Thanksgiving 0
    Autumn of Year; Autumn of Life 0
    Brian's Birthday and New Year's Eve 0
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    Deep Time 0
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    Nobody 0
    Feeling the Wind 0
    The Wild Doe and the Hunter 0
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    The End of the World: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 6 pm PDT 1
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    Stone Cry 0
    Amore Immortale 0
    Reality and Unreality 1
    Lyrical Life 1
    Easter 0
    Shakespeare's Birthday 0
    Friends During Need 1
    Death--A Play--or the Final Act 0
    Moods 0
    I Was Worried About You 0
    Song of Life 2
    Me 1
    Oh Mother of My Life, My Mind, My Heart--Happy Birthday (Sunday, April 3, 2011) 0
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    Life Is 8
    Following My Friend 3
    Small Moments (Written by Patricia, for Brian) 1
    For Precious Michael (Written by Patricia, for me) 4
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    The Power to Create 4
    A Single Fortune Cookie 6
    The Meaning of Life 2
    Dreamless 3
    Prayers 3
    Lost Love 2
    I Thank My Mother for My Birthday and for Her Wonderful Mother Love 3
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    All the Way with Part Way 2
    Loving, Living, and Dying 6
    Dreaming and Seeming 3
    Poem Prayer 2
    Science, Poetry, Philosophy, and More 2
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    Someday-Dying 2
    Between Yes and No 3
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    Zappa the Magnificent 1
    In the Midst of Life 2
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    Real Illusion 1
    The Unknown 1
    My Apparently Known Possible Fates in This World 1
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    Leaving Life 1
    Precious Jade 2
    Fear and Grief and Going: Unguilty of the Grave 1
    Using and Losing Time 1
    Loveless Life 2
    Good Life, Good Grief 1
    Dreamless 1
    Ontology versus Oncology 1
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    No Present, No Future: All Past 3
    Hippocratic Hell 1
    First Light 2
    Almost At the Limit [--A Sonnet] 1
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    Broken 1
    Birthday Termination 1
    Moments 1
    First and Last Cry 1
    Love 2
    Final Fragility 1
    End of the World 1
    Tripping 1
    Seasonal Ring 1
    Gifts that Go and Still Stay 1
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    Enthusiasm: God Within 3
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    Poetic Form 0
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    Nothing Special 2
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    My Most SCARED Moments 2
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    All That I Have 3
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    Tripping 2
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    My Cry 1
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    Entre Enfer 1
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    Lovers 7
    Art 5
    Things to Do 4
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    Ameliorator 5
    Thanksgiving 7
    Worlds of Light 24
    Failure's Fortress 13
    Song of Life (Original Version) 13