BEFORE AND AFTER

There was a time when I was not here,

No thoughts, no name or identity were mine.

I had no pain or sorrow, not a thing for me to know,

Where was I before I became me, somewhere waiting?

A time will come when I am no longer here, will I have thoughts?

A name remembered, My identity will not be this body or mind.

Again there will be no pain or sorrow, I will be somewhere else,

Before and after, heaven bound, where was I before my first sound?

Keith Garrett