youth

to the young one,

youth is a time of skipping through the clouds, light and airy, padding across the white and blue range of sky, voice calling out, loud, ringing with life. you are alive, you know it and you want to feel and know and claim every patch of cloud and every corner of sky.

but no one tells you how the clouds have gaps through them. and you can fall. how far will you land then? and no one tells you about how the lightning streaks and thunder rumbles can turn the sky into a black mass. frightening and frightened, you retreat but where will you go?

keenly feeling, sensitive before time dulls and numbs your senses, you face up to the storms. and only the somewhat foolish thoughts that there is a way out keeps you going. to cut a way through the dark into the rays of the sun.

young one, you must know by now - the secret lies in crossing the clouds one at a time.

when the sun was out, you mocked the anchor. you said it held you down from where you should have been. but realise that as you rock from side to side, turbulent and disturbed, it keeps you whole.

and the pessimism, the cynicism of age cannot dim your light. this so even as you cross beyond the rainbow.