Perhaps, time will tell

I reached out to an old friend this morning, a connection to another life. Long ago, in my ancient youth, I could visit another world, The Country - a place in California that I now consider an image of Paradise.  Like Paradise, it lies beyond my earthly reach.  Unlike Paradise, I have no hope of visiting it again, because it no longer exists.  Time has changed me, rooted me where I stand, too deep now for transplanting.

But I retain a connection, a memory of vision and sound and smell and touch that the early spring here has triggered, and  I long for both the Paradise of the past and the hoped-for Paradise of the afterlife.

 To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

--Robert Frost