Welcome It All

 

You’ll never know life until you have tasted it all,

A scrapbook of images to touch and recall,

For the joy and the sadness of all that we’ve seen,

Are just snippets of time and the places we’ve been.

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The breath of a sunbeam that wakens the morn,

The dew of the mist as a day is reborn,

The scent of a meadow in emeralds and greens,

The power of living and its forceful vaccine.

*

Summer filled childhoods of buckets and spades,

Castles and pirates and games that we played,

Swimming with mermaids away from dry land,

And dancing in moonlight barefoot on the sand,

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The joy of that first kiss that came in surprise,

With a promise of passion and love in disguise,

The joining of bodies and that feeling of wonder,

And heartbreak that follows a love pulled asunder.

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Time that raced forward now children were grown,

Echoes of happiness ease the suffering we own.

The fight to forgive the mistakes that were made,

And the struggle to hold onto the reason we stayed.

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So welcome what comes, don’t cry or forestall,

For you’ll never know life until you have tasted it all.