Borrowed People
Always to Return
She stood in the corner Deeply engaged in a conversation I politely interrupted And asked if I could borrow her for a moment As I squired her away to a different corner I realized that we borrow everyone And everyone borrows us The people we love And hold in our hands and in our hearts The same goes for time and living The objects we hold and cherish We own nothing in the end Though we may try to cling or extend It is all fleeting, temporary Ephemeral like the morning Malibu fog Rolling from the ocean into and over the mountains It is all impermanent I would say that the only things that last Are the handprints of love on our hearts Memories in our minds And the souls of others in our very souls But those too can fade and do Due to loss of thoughts and memory Due to time And in the end, due to loss of breath We all become due It is like the library card I cherished as a child The one with the metal strip And raised lettering That allowed me to take out History and fiction Stories and tales Pages of wonder But, after a few weeks Had to be returned And placed back on the shelf As if in a Chekhov play I walk out of the library With a stack of books And stop I gaze at a tree with both dead branches And new growth, new leaves And I have a deep realization I am borrowing my parents And they are borrowing, me I am borrowing my child I am borrowing my brother I an borrowing all of my family I am borrowing all of my friends I am borrowing my love I am borrowing everything I own Everything I touch and hold Everything I hold dear So, knowing we are all borrowers And that our loans are so fleeting So quickly due To return and to be returned Perhaps over and over How then, can I live without gratitude And appreciate each and every moment I have Grateful, precious love Not with things, but with people Knowing full well we are on borrowed time And that we are all borrowed All borrowed people (Inspired by the Christopher Isherwood quote: "We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best we are merely borrowers."
