the child ahead of you walking
through a season you can no longer enter.

The light belongs to them now.

The way older musicians
listen to young players discovering intervals,
The miracle of arrival.

A melody carried forward
Themes returning in altered form.

You age quietly beside them.
Friends disappearing.

Yet when your daughter smiles
or your son turns suddenly in sunlight,
something impossible occurs.

You hear your own vanished youth
echoing in theirs
the way a final chord contains
all the earlier chords hidden within.

And for one suspended instant
aging no longer feels like loss but counterpoint.