My pen for once will bleed tonight
as autumn's acorns drum the roof
bringing my mortality into sight.
Is anyone actually time proof?

If so it's nobody I know
for they have mostly fallen by the way.
Gone to where ever people go
after they've lived their last day.

I turn my thoughts from those now passed
for next up to come is the regrets;
words left unsaid in the past;
time wasted on worries and frets.

Those to whom I should have said more
before the speaking time was done.
Others alienated long before
by words I'd best have not let run.

And the time that I burned through
as if the fuel would have no end
while all the while the years' rime grew
as life's road took yet one more bend.

Second guessing that false path I took
in the search for security and money.
Both flowed away like a fast brook
neither satisfied as simple honey.

Did I wait years longer than I should
between my first poem and my next?
Perhaps by now I'd have become good
instead of writing rhythm that sounds hexed.

But I guess the worst of all
was the wall I built to keep hurts out
which also muted feelings' call
no matter how loved ones would shout.

This red ink's flow?I'll stop it now,
break down that wall and start to Give.
Try balancing the scales somehow
in the short years I have left to live.