Sorry, I Thought I Had More Time! Poem by Roy Davenport

This morning as I shaved, I saw a stranger in my mirror.
Not the young man my mind told me should be there,
But someone a lot like my father staring back at me.
Brown hair had been replaced with gray that began
In earnest at the temples and integrated liberally with
brown over the rest of my head.
Tired, sad eyes stared back where once bright
expectant eyes had sparkled with life.
I glanced down at the hands that held my razor
and saw the same weathered, wrinkled hands that
had bandaged my skinned knees as a boy and
toiled tirelessly in newly tilled gardens or pecked away
on the old typewriter crafting a new poem or sermon.
How did I end up with my father’s hands?
It seems only yesterday that I was a young man
bent on changing the world or at least making my mark.
The years dragged by at a leisurely pace back then
and I had plenty of time to chase dreams, foolish or not.
The last time I looked I was twenty one, just married and
full of life and expectations. I remember laughing a lot.
Then thirty crawled by without regret because I
still had more life in front of me than behind me.
Then the years picked up speed and before I knew it
It was “Lordy Lordy I just turned forty” but still... plenty of time.
I can’t remember all the days that made up my lost years
after that. They slipped by silently, in a sort of blur.
Now I feel rushed. There is so much more I want to do,
to say, to change. If only I could turn that hourglass over
and begin a new life I think I could do better knowing,
as I do now, that I do not have all the time in the world.
I am mortal and mortality is deadly serious.
So I look back at that person in the mirror and all I can
think to say is “I’m sorry! ” I thought I had more time.