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Gone Are the Days
The tragedy of old age is not that one is
old, but that one is young.
—Oscar Wilde
Gone are the days—the halcyon, magical days of yore,
When you were young and full of marrow in your bones,
And hot and swift the blood ran coursing through your veins.
How little thought you gave to the fevered rush of Time!
And all the best-laid plans? A pile of dried-up leaves,
Which raked and gathered, crumble between your aging hands.
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He Finds a Maple Leaf
A little boy picks up a maple leaf,
Just one of many littering the ground
Outside the church. He hears the nearby sound
Of someone crying, overwhelmed with grief.
He brings his treasure home—the leaf of gold
And orange-red; how beautiful the hues!
How far removed from sacred rites and pews!
He doesn’t think that someday he’ll grow old
And die. He puts the leaf beside his bed,
But when he wakes—alas! The leaf is brown
And sere, the edges curled. He wears a frown
Upon his face and cries, “My leaf! It’s dead!”
He mourns the loss, then throws the leaf away,
And mourns again for what was yesterday.
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Cheryl Corey is a Connecticut poet. She is also an author of short stories, a novella, and recently completed a novel.
Cheryl: Very thoughtful verse. Melancholic, but beautiful.
I always tend to feel melancholy at this time of year.
Profound, and alas I’m feeling a bit leafy.
I really like that analogy, Paul.
I love the connection of the browning maple leaf to the grief the boy hears expressed.
Thanks, Cynthia. The inspiration for the poem was a photo I saw in a book. I couldn’t get the image out of my head.
Beautiful and sad connection of the dried maple leaf to the aging process!
Ironic, in a way, that there’s so much beauty in autumn, but a sense of sadness too.
I love the thought put into “He Finds a Maple Leaf”, and the simple, yet poignant images portrayed.
Thanks, David. I tried to keep it simple to align with the subject of the young boy.
Very elegant. I’m tempted to read the sonnet as a subtle requiem for Canadian values.
Woe, Canada!
Cheryl, the Oscar Wilde quote frames “Gone Are the Days” perfectly. Both poems say so much about our fleeting moment on God’s green earth. I especially like the leaf being the key to the knowledge of our mortality in “He Finds a Maple Leaf”… a hard lesson indeed. Beautifully done.
I don’t even remember exactly when or where – I think it was a biography I read years ago – but the quote spoke to me, so I wrote it down in a notebook I keep of interesting words, phrases, etc. You never know when you might be able to incorporate something in your poetry.
Both were simply lovely, Cheryl. You touched a part of me I myself seldom care to touch.
“Gone Are The Days” is humorous to me, because I seem to keep handling leaves that just accumulate rather than crumble (many loose sheets of paper, notebooks, and the pages of a still expanding library). But I sense the loss of innumerable little natural treasures, because I too used to bring them home or bring them in. That little boy in “He Finds A Maple Leaf” is myself over and over.