AssonPublishing UK

POEMS AND POETRY BOOKS-THOUGHTS ACROSS A LIFETIME

AUSTIN EDWARD ORCHARD

 

          Songbird
           Austin Edward Orchard

Sweet songbird,
You must fly
Upward,
High into the sky.
Stretch your wings, your wings of youth,
And sing your songs of freedom.
Let all see your beauty,
Yours to share.
What a fool,
To think that I,
The traveller of days,
Should hold you from what is yours.
Fly sweet songbird,
Fly ever onward
Across the seasons,
Over the seas of time
To the shores of expectation;
Past the mountains of dreams
Through the valleys of experience.
Fly sweet songbird,
Fly ever onward,
And when, sweet thing,
When your wings are tired,
Weighed down by time
And grown heavy with the burdens of life,
Then rest my beloved,
Rest.
For I, like the aged Oak,
Shall stand and await your return
As the summer awaits the sun.
I cannot turn the seasons of life
That have turned before time,
As I cannot stop your flight,
Your flight of life.
Fly my dearest, fly,
Fly ever onward, and I shall wait;
For like the migrant swallow,
You know when all is done.
And I who loves you so,
Will be here,
The aged Oak in whose branches you may sleep
And rest your weary wings in safety and in peace
And sing to me of all gone past.
Until then, my beloved songbird,
Until then,
Farewell,
Farewell.

website © Alison Orchard Hammill
August 2003 - updated November 2008