How thin these walls have become,
the walls between youth and age,
    between the conscious and the unconscious,
    between this world and the next,
    between my heart and yours,
    between our hearts and theirs.

Permeable.
Translucent.

Through ever-thinning walls
I hear other voices.
I am still and I listen:
    cataracts scale away;
    old skin sloughs off;
    new appendages grow.

Some tell me this is maturity,
but I say

grace.

Text and
image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.