What Happened?
When we're young,
We play with bubbles;
We blow them and blow them,
'Til they fill the air, surround us;
We see them shimmering like crystals in the sunlight
As they lift into the sky,
And we chase them,
Run after them,
Reach for them,
But when we try to hold them in our hands,
Grab ahold of them, grasp them,
They burst, pop and vanish.
Then it's fun;
We try to pop as many as we possibly can.
But when we get older,
The bubbles turn to dreams;
We dream more and more,
Hope more, farther, grander;
They shine, tantalizing us,
And as they start to slip away,
We chase them, run as hard and as fast as we can,
And we reach out to hold onto them, our last hopes,
But they burst, are crushed;
And this time, it's not as much fun.
We begin to dream less, blow less bubbles,
And, for fear of breaking them,
We instead let them slip away,
And then, after too many bubbles blown and burst,
We just stop playing;
Life becomes sad, too risky;
Innocence has passed;
We're playing for keeps;
Now there's more to lose than a ray of sunshine
And an ounce of soap.
Your heart, life, and soul are drifting,
Lifting away into the sky,
And you sit and watch...
~April 29, 1998