Season to Season

I have been fooled before, and just because
This summer seems so long, it might not be
My last. Winter could come again, and pause
The sky like a taped tactical descent
Of pocket paratroopers. Things to see
Could happen yet, and life prove not quite spent
But still abundant, still the main event.

The trick, I’m learning, is to stay in doubt,
Season to season, of what time might bring,
And patiently await how things turn out.
Eventually time tells you everything.
If it takes time to do so, no surprise
In that. You fold your arms, you scan the skies,
And tell yourself that life has made you wise,

If only by the way it ebbs away.
But still it takes an age, and after all,
Though nearly gone, life didn’t end today,
And you might be here when the first leaves fall
Or even when the snow begins again,
If life that cast you, when this all began,
As a small boy, still needs a dying man.

— The New Yorker, January 15, 2018