Celandine.

By the gate, old age waits with patience
for youth to catch up, and to seek in wisdom
the solution and cure.

"How does it feel, to be old and grey?"
"Fresh as a bird and full of song!"
"Tell me if this fancy be..."
"Oh, no sir!" she replied.

"I'm young at heart with each new day,
Just like I was when I was small.
It's the bones that creak and ache, you see,
Age has creased me, withered me dry."

"Youth is folly," I replied,
"yet great the gift it brings to life.
Tell me, from all you've seen,
what is the cause of our misery?"

"The world is made of shady dreams,
that make men chase from shore to shore,
to shoot at space, invade the sea,
and all for our sake, so they say."

"They kill the herbs, and raze the plants,
and banish all who dare trespass,
The birds, foxes, insects too,
yet each one has its work to do."

"The trees grieve and shed their leaves,
though they cannot walk, they leave the fields;
Beneath their bark they tell the tale
of every ring their trunks have made."

"Every morning, foul or fair,
 People sleep in dreaming while the daylight glares;
Then they rush out speeding, incanting their cares,
Their insides reeling from a life's wear and tear."

"And so Life passes, year upon year.
Bright at day's dawning, gone heaven knows where;
Night time's ghost with silver white hair,
A whisper in the wind while the earth lies bare."

"But look at me, this humble frame:
Once I didn't seem so plain.
Young men turned their heads and sighed,
the bold came knocking at my door."

"Who'd look at me now, as pale as straw,
a frail bent stalk while the wind blows raw?
Gone are the days I played my charms
and grown men sheltered in my arms."

"Remember, remember, exactly just how,
far off in the dim past it always was now.
But since we forget this, we furrow the brow,
yet from only one seedling grows golden the bough."

"Now the hour is late, and the way is long:
take this gift, now be good and be gone!"
I left her smiling as I strode out the miles
with a gold bowl corona of the herb Celandine."