The Irreversibility of Nature

So of nature we are, so like we are to ineffable
Nature's little sly caprices and artifices.
Surely made in her imagination to resemble
nothing that existed before us. She toys
with us, implacably and manipulatively as
though continually testing the boundaries
of our disposition to her creature time that
fleets and her handmaiden seasons that
tantalize, flirt and escape our ardent
wishes that they linger yet awhile to
comfort, before they arbitrarily desert us.

The raw new year arrives as the spent one
departs; how like our cycles of life-and-death.
The new season, emerging with hope and renewal,
strains to attain independent maturity, to
distinguish itself from its predecessors, through
an indefatigable chain of events serendipitously,
often errantly otherwise. Free will to discharge
seasonal obligations lightly inevitably struggles
with Nature's adamantly irreversible demands.

So too is it with humankind as we strain from
childhood heedlessly abandoning tender years
to clasp sovereign will, zealously claiming our
decisively mature years. Only to glimpse them
too soon behind us, leaving us yearning to return
to what was, when what is confuses and disappoints.
The paradox of eagerly wishing time to flee when
young, then begging it to lag and finally reverse
is as impossible to achieve as entreating Nature
to renounce the momentum of the seasons.
Only the truth is, they endure and we do not.