Like A Child

LIKE A CHILD

Like a child I just sat in the sunlight

and played with the minutes as they went running by.

Like a child who had never known sorrow

I didn't hurry I just looked at the sky.

While the clouds went on endlessly passing.

All the clouds on their long voyage home

seemed to say that youth is everlasting

but a rose cannot grow alone.

Like a child I would listen in silence

to the soft sound of evening as it caught up the day,

till you were there in the gathering darkness

and we found that our green years had all gone away.

Now the clouds are going forever

here awhile then gone evermore

and a child on the far side of never

has to run when time closes the door.

Then take my hand and as children we'll go now

all alone through the thundering crowds.

Take my hand and together we'll look now

like a child for the little lost clouds.

ROD McKUEN

from "Listen to the Warm" ©1967