The mystery of life

We are the travellers on unequal routes

When the morning broke,
Reticent one was to do the things of routine,
Yet one rose slow and going for no records,
The home straight picked up speed,
As the phone in my pocket rang aloud,
At this time you wondered what for,
In answering, I heard many questions of why,
As it sank in, I sank into a park bench,
And wept bowed in anguish and confusion,
To me, she was also indeed a mother,
My construct of love, respect, and pragmatism,
She had passed into the annals of time.

Everything is ephemeral,
Life the hooks on the coat rail of eternity,
From a past long gone to a future unknown,
We are the people who make the stories,
That gives time its sense of existence,
In the quiet of the places of interment,
Stones like shoots of plant life stand,
Starting with everything so beloved,
A name is scrolled, maybe with its ties,
Years of the entrance and departure,
And that is the history of man or woman,
So short on a weathered memorial stone.