LIFE IS SHORT poem

by roy k austin
(england)

Remember time, remember place,
when feet to knees seemed like a mountain,
that smile upon your mother’s face
as from her eyes your living fountain,
when life was yours - a world unspoken
when on all fours your ' glass ' was broken,
that bright surprise - a robin show -
how everything was there, to know ?

A life - time sits here in recluse -
the wood-seat waits to be of use
and mocks my age with Poke - the tortoise,
happy, crawling to have caught us
underneath an ageing sloe,
with nothing more, or less to know.