In old age we are reborn again,
Our faults shadowed in the veins beneath our skin
The bones of us that shout within and poke without
Are not the same as those that we had trusted in
To hold our weight at the thinnest edge of things
When muscle tied them all together.
That muscle too has gone away,
or loosened there within,
And the flesh we once wore with pride, or not,
Has gone to skin,
And that mottle we wear now,
But for the scars we earned, is not us,
And does not mirror what we were,
Or thought we were.
Before we were born again;
When what we once wanted to be
Before we became what we have been
Was what we were,
And suddenly we were new again,
Just as we were once remade from babes to children
And from children became our youth
And from youth became young men;
That young man was not the youth that he had been
Nor the child he barely knew
And that child was not the babe.
That youth may have been a better self,
The unsure courage there within
Still to be tested against the man to come,
Who may have failed and failed again,
Until that young man at last became us
Or what we thought we knew to be us,
Before we became the man we were,
And will never be again,
No matter the wanting,
Not buried yet, but withered,
Until we are born again
To dust and memory.