LOOKING BACK

Sometimes when I'm up in the loft and I turn to look at the Lake lying silver blue in the brown of the mountains' cradle, its far face hazed by a silent wind not yet arrived here, its near face clear as the blue air - the mask of drama removed - I am reminded of the many faces I have seen and places I have been, and it seems as though life is but a storing up of visitations for enjoyment in the elder years, even more than the events themselves were enjoyed at the time, for full enjoyment is a matter of distance, and of depths, that one does not have in youth; for the elder years are when joy is at last in its prime, when youth is at last enjoyed and fulfilled. How sad it is then, if one has done little, and so finds little to look back on. As I turn and look back on the Lake, it is like a looking glass into the past, where sleep all the things that ever were, as though I need only reach out and stir to hide all, or fall to stillness to see all revealed, which is what happens as you grow still with years, and learn that time takes nothing away.