Ten Years Later

TEN YEARS LATER

 

 

I looked and looked but never found

 

On the spring sweet grass of the Ooty Downs

 

A sign of the place where the horses ran -

 

Looked and sighed but could not discover

 

The narrowest path in the close green clover

 

Nor one rusty horseshoe to prove where they ran.

 

On open stretches in rides enchanted

 

The beat of our hearts too fast to be counted

 

We rocked to the canter and rose to the trot

 

While the sun beat down so golden and hot

 

And the grass was pounded and trampled away

 

But that was another, a happier day.

 

Now ten years later I stand and gaze

 

At the empty Downs in the summer haze

 

I see a ghost rider, he shouts "Ride On!"

 

Tears blur my eyes - when I blink he is gone.

 

Silly in the sunlight to cry like this

 

Silly to sigh now for all that I miss.

 

Lost horses, old friends, a long vanished season

 

I tell myself I must listen to reason

 

For that which is past can not ever come back

 

My life has been good, there is nothing I lack

 

Yet I long for those days that will never return

 

For all that I had then for ever I'll yearn.