Birthday Card

What is the occasion, after all, but another
measure of the time we have shared, one more
year cluttering the previous seventy-three
that have expressed themselves in childhood,
youth and maturity. All seasons of our life
we stumbled upon in a symbiotic grace that
marked our lives and the years gaining in
swiftness of impetus as surely as impulse
and compulsion marked our early years.

Another feverish flurry of covert activity
in preparation for the striking hour and the
presentation received feigning glad surprise.
Gratitude does hover to the fore in view of
anxiety awaiting reception. How could I not
appreciate this creative impulse even as it leans
on an earlier culture and convention, for is not
time and longing and forlorn love timeless?
Without an end and a beginning...?

We live to love for without love where is the
value? That remains a constant, the compelling
force reflective of our lives. Our years carefully
numbered, as we are born to begin the journey
of life circumscribed yet haphazard the experience.
The love and care you render unto me as a
manuscript embellished with twining floral
displays, illuminated characters of a heart-torn
verse by Khalil Ghibran sorrowing of time's
passage and love's lost grandeur, itself timeless.

We are given, in our age, to gentle observations
and all-too-wry introspection. A touch of gladness,
a dollop of sadness. We cannot but recapture the
merest hint of the memory of the carelessness of
youth, the notionality of time everlasting. Our
minds, in youth, cannot grasp the reality of what is
transitory and finite. Like the ageless poet, reality
remains the purview of the elderly where regret
has no place in fondly detailed reminiscence.