To a Life Unspent

On the precipice it stands, loose-limbed with a sinewy grace, body taut with an implied swagger, face, grinning, a sun-dappled gold. Unclouded by the cataract of cynicism, its eyes survey a horizon heat-hazed with a thousand promises. As yet, love has left it with no sutured heart, nor loss summoned a creeping despair. By no friend has it yet been betrayed, from no purpose has it resigned and strayed. Lies, it has heard, but, believed, cannot hurt. Ignorant of what it doesn’t know, it has an ego undented by falls, not yet weaned from the milk of optimism. It has yet to learn the vices of body and mind that take a lifetime to unlearn, or the discontent sired by desire, and what it could gain when there’s nothing else it wants, that wisdom can be glimpsed only by a sobered fool, yet Sobriety keeps a lonely vigil over a humanity drunk on hate-filled wine, and Truth is a far-flung place, maze-like in black, white and every shade of gray, that an ideal is oft a shabby lover next to the painted temptresses sent by Vainglory and Greed, that too often, in a world of crass appetites, an angel has to stoop low before it can fly high, and, thus flying, loses its angelic smile. It does not yet suspect Fortune’s mischief, taking us unawares with its games, demanding that we shuffle in time to the music of whims, that the love of life is often repaid, yet sometimes unrequited. All this Youth has yet to learn. Pristine, with not a wrinkle on its soul, it stands on the precipice, untroubled by hints of the limits of infinity, emboldened by intimations of immortality. With wings unfurled, beaming in the sunlight for one last time, it soars wide-eyed towards a life yet unspent.