Forsaken Gardens

<br>Where are all the joys of yesterday?<br>Where, now, is the happiness and laughter that we shared?<br>Gone, like our childhood dreams, aspirations and beliefs --<br>Time is a thief, and he ravages our gardens,<br>stripping saplings, felling trees,<br>trampling on our flowers, sucking sap and drying seeds.<br>In the midnight candle-light of experience<br>all colour fades, green fingers grey....<br>Time, alone, shall murder all the flowers,<br>still, there`s time to share our plots and all that we call `ours`.<br>How much worse, then, if we all deny each others` needs<br>and keep our garden`s privately?<br>Its getting colder, wind and rain leave gashes;<br>looking back, I only see the friends I`ve lost.<br>Fires smoulder, raking through the ashes<br>my hands are dirty, my mind is numb,<br>I count the cost of `I` :<br>"I need to get on, I`ve got to tend my garden;<br>got to shut you out, no time to crave your pardon now".<br>Now I see the garden that I`ve grown is just the same<br> as those outside;<br>the fences, erected to protect, simply divide....<br>There`s ruination everywhere, the weather has<br> played havoc with the grass --<br>does anyone believe his garden`s really going to last?<br>In the time allotted us, can any man keep miserly his own?<br>Is there any pleasure in a solitary growth?<br>Come and see my garden if you will ----<br>I`d like someone to see it all before each root is killed.<br>Surely now its time to open up each life to all ----<br>tear down the walls, if its not too late!<br>There is so much sorrow in the world;<br>there is so much emptiness and heartbreak and pain;<br>Somewhere on the road we have all taken a wrong<br> turn ----<br>how can we build the right path again?<br>Through the grief, through the pain,<br>our flowers need each others` rain....