One Day Poem by Winsy Tink

One day
Wings will sprout from my shoulders
And I will fly with the blue-birds over the rainbow
I will sail on a handsome ship –
One day – one fine day –
To where answers end and questions begin
And retrieve the legendary black pearl
from twenty thousand leagues under
For my smiling mother

One day
I will grow tall and charming and popular
I will go to college with a pocketful of dreams
And come out of it with my head full of ambition
The world will be my oyster one day – just you wait –
And love will find me, as I have always trusted it will
So will success, and fame, and fortune
And she’ll be ever so proud of me,
So proud my smiling mother


One day
I’ll clear the work on my desk (and maybe clear my head a little)
I’ll plan a holiday for us to the Caribbean
And our love, now a little lost, will find its way back
I promise, there will come a day when
The symphony will be finished;
Tales shall again have happy endings.
I will visit the lonely cottage, the old willow tree,
And sat beneath it, my smiling mother

One day
I will learn, heart sunk with regret,
That ‘one day’ can only mean this present day
That mother will not smile forever
That ‘forever’ is a misnomer, and some promises are for breaking
That wings won’t sprout just by believing
(But that’s no reason to live a Scrooge)
And that fame, fortune and the wealth of the world
Don’t matter to me half as much
As lying with you – here, right now – on the velvety grass
Counting and re-counting the dusty stars
For one day
Just one more day