There is no sanctity in youth.
Time continues undaunted
marching on hands firmly resolved
which circle like vultures
ever closer to doom.
Age steals like a night shadow
creeping fast and unseen
scheming clever ambushes
which take us when we look away
Young dreams become simply
broken promises.
So many clear faces have,
even so soon as this,
grow shaded and obscurely
faded away.
So many moments have,
already, grown to memories
and the memories been killed
or stretched out of rhyme
with accuracy (a death in itself.)
There is no sanctity in youth.
There is no sanctity in youth.
The young years are but
a lingering moment
too soon gone, too poorly
understood, until too late
to be truly appreciated
and appropriately enjoyed
and celebrated.
Time will wait for no one.
We must all match the pace
or fall fast behind.
People haven’t yet
found a means
to keep the moon
from crawling steadily into the sun
and the sun again into the moon.
They haven’t yet found
a way to tether the
vulturing hands.
Spring flowers crumble brownly dead
to celebrate the fall.
There is no sanctity in youth.
Ian David Arlett
Peterborough Poets 