jani johe webster--(In Memory-May 2013)--United States

we have not lived such a long time

when autumn nights can move us so
when we know where the seagulls sleep at dawn
and hear the music of the years as a twilight lullaby

when we wear fog like an overcoat
write letters in the waves
then laugh when they disappear

we have not lived such a long time

*********

The phrase "we have not lived such a long time", a line from one of my mother's poems, had been haunting me for months. Yet in all the folders of her poetry, I couldn't find it any where. I knew she had written it long ago, before I was born. I began to question, did the poem really exist? And then yesterday, opening a folder I thought contained some of my own writing, this poem was on top, as if my mother placed it there to greet me, across time and space. My mother is so right: we have not lived such a long time, that we cannot experience the wonder and magic of this life, day by day and hour by hour. ~~ Nila J. Webster