My eyes open earlier more often now from that sleep,
The sleep we all must have at the end of our day.
Some may go to sleep earlier to get up earlier
And some may go to sleep later because their life style dictates.
My eyes now close at the end of the day on my wife’s schedule.
They open much earlier, though, because Life’s too short.
Dreams and thoughts gather quickly in my head
once my eye lids close to rest at the end of my day.
They assemble and replay events, sometimes strangely juxtaposed
from yesterdays or maybe those days yet to come
but they bring back to life the faces of those
that are no longer sharing this space on earth,
At least not in my waking state when my eyes are open in the day.
Lately, I’ve witnessed when my eyes wide open,
Someone from my past stroll by, had not seen them for quite sometime.
Their hair now shades of grey and their eyes gather in folds of skin,
Their walk or gait has slowed and their jeans and shirt are wrinkled,
where once not long ago they would be pressed with straight folded lines
and their collars also stiff with careful and honored pride.
This attention captured by my eyes wide open through the day,
for those that once again enter onto my pathway I’ve not seen for many a day,
Gives me pause to better understand the aging aches and pains upon my limbs,
the wrinkled brow my mirror refuses to reflect and quietly awakens also, with my day.
My eyes now open earlier in the morning, as I wish them to,
so that life does not pass by me as I sleep, my eyes wide open.
