Among the Lilies Singing

And suddenly all seems a darkness,

The flickering light of mind gone out,

Rushing of angry voices, a stream

Of negatives confront the being.

Who is this I ask who speaks

From my mouth, with my tongue,

Lashing out, frustrate, spent,

Blind in a blinded world.

Peace and the heart's delight have fled

Across the borders of the soul,

No sanctuary remains for one

Besieged by grief and torn by death.

The old oak stands shorn of limbs

And I companionless stand by,

Its blackened trunk where borers feast

Once stood so strong and resolute

No gale could tear away a branch,

No force gain entry though its bark,

Indestructible its armoured might.

But fate and chance intervene

And suddenly the strong grow weak.

Three times I have seen cancer's ruin,

Too late the body met the foe.

As the life-force in the oak consumed

The human form eaten away

By a stealthy visitor who came

Unnoticed in the bloom of years

To slowly penetrate the cells.

Can the beautiful be lost,

Effaced from human memory,

Is there a place beyond our time

Where truth invincible resides?

I shall see beyond the grief-torn years

Where the light eternal grows,

My ears attuned to different sounds

As I walk among the lilies singing.