I stare at the postcard, now yellowed with time,

of the ship that took me from all that was mine,

my country, my friends, the mild winter frost, 

the soft summer days, the paths that I crossed,

while echoes of voices silenced by death,

fade away slowly with every new breath,

and faces decay in the sad dimming light,

as candle flames flicker in the long hours of night,

reflecting again on the nature of things, 

where all is explained, from beggars to kings,

while most of them listen to fakirs and thieves,

on the invisible veil that life for us weaves;

the voyage from London across the great sea,

that night in New York, the wonders to see,

Grand Central Station, the train to the north,

wondering what days new would bring forth,

in the vastness that stretched from the lakes to the pole,

by changing the scene to play put our role,

the boys, the girls, the teachers in  school,

first kisses, first sorrows, the unwritten rule,

the steel mills, the smoke, the forests and fields, 

my mind to my memories more and more yields,

the promising future, now decades gone past,

but life’s in the present and the present is vast,

no beginning, no end, the light and the shade

we are existence and from it are made.