Losing Hours

When I was introduced to the finite nature of my residence on this Earth upon hearing the words "you have leukemia," my future collapsed from a panoramic scope to a tiny lens in an instant. On the ambulance ride to the medical center, I faced backwards. There on that gurney, I watched miles slipping by at high speed as though sliding into my past without a view ahead...a rapidly receding past and no future. As I grew up, leukemia was a death sentence, and though I knew it was no longer a certainty, I now had an expiration date.

That was May 26, 2010, an anniversary swiftly approaching, stirring within me both gratitude for God's gift of each new day and trepidation about losing or wasting a second of those precious hours. Despite my best efforts to just accept and fill that time with the best I have to give, I still harbor fear of missing the treasures of hours that somehow fly away. It is a wonder I can sleep at all, and when I wake in the wee hours, sometimes I feel those hours flying away, lost forever...

Mick

Losing Hours

The hours sometimes fail to touch my soul,

To sway aloft on silent silver wings,

Or drift in darkness on wings black as coal,

And abandoned, my earthbound spirit sings.

Slow measure and dark melody, forlorn

Hymns that echo emptiness in their cry,

From my most human breaking heart are torn;

The plainsong of my soul streams to the sky.

In answer, silent wings may swift comply,

To carry me through golden instants bright,

Or lifted on unseen currents to fly,

And leave my spirit stranded in the night.

Although more hours each gifted day contains,

My fear of losing precious time remains.

Mick McKellar

May 2011