If I had stayed: A poem by Mike Cole

If I had stayed, where would I be?

Would my life have been an Ocean, my joy from the sea?

Or would flowered meadows have grown dark?

Devoid of life, lost of spark?

If I had stayed, would you have cared?

Or would I have been left, forgotten, to the creeping night?

Entombed, exhausted, succumbed to your inescapable blight.