long and winding

I am glad that life
is a long and winding road.
This gives me space enough
to live and breathe in the Grace of God.
This gives me time.

Time is there, if you want it.
For you to experience change and healing
and then change again.  Growth
and knowledge and then more growth.
Time is there, if you want it.

I feel the fragility of life as it is ever moving forward.
Turning forty-five feels like I’m dying.  I am ever aware
that I am not young, not any more. I can never again be young.
‘We are celebrating my being closer to death,”
I joked with my family. I was struck by the fact that I am half done.

I look into the sad, ancient eyes
of my neighbor. She is turning eighty-five
this year.  She is home bound, pain bound, stricken with the limitations
of her life and yet she must resolve hard within herself, because
she never complains. I need that Holy perspective to remind me
that she is the one that feels like she’s dying, because she is.
Her life is all about limitations and simply what she cannot do.

I am more aware of it today than I ever have been.
I am still alive and, this is for you too my friends,
The road is long and winding for a reason.
And time is there if you want it.

by MELODY HARRISON HANSON, September 27, 2011

Other poetry I have written.