We Grieve for …

We grieve for the things we held dear
Which seem to have been taken away
And for the values we had learned to cherish
In a long-ago world where ethics held sway.
We grieve for our younger days
And wish we had been more aware
Of ourselves and the others around us
Before being caught up in chronology's snare.

We grieve for mistakes once committed
By chance or with deliberate intent;
That our wishes and lives had been better fitted
And that more had been saved and less had been spent.
We grieve for moments and people expired
And would like to turn back the chapters
We lament adolescence retired
Eschewing the recall of history's sharp-taloned raptors.

We grieve that which never can be
Feeling often malcontent and irritated
That what is in the past is forever gone
'Cept in the land of dreams regurgitated;
For what might have been
In the face of what is,
For the things we had hoped to live
With the sight of what's seen.
Those things which we grieve
Appear on our sleeve
To those who come close and know us;
Held tightly within
Memory is not sin
We need no one else to show us.

Life is a fabric we weave
Of threads we rejoice
And others we grieve;
Without the one,
The other dissolves
Into a land of numbness
Where nothing resolves.
While tempting,
We must resist too quickly leaving
Our grieving
For what we once had then lost
Just now aware of the cost.