Figuring Out Life While Aging
Branches with green buds
in the early morning light,
swaying and sun-bless”d
-/
Through bare grey branches
I can see spring’s pink blossoms:
transient beauty.
-/
Ambushed by beauty -
the blossoming Bridalwreath
declaring spring now.
-/
Smoke rises
from the extinguished candle:
the aura lingers.
-/
With the ambivalence of March weather
I miss the weight of your eyes,
looking among stones
from the cairn we built together.
I go to the lake searching
for stones I can choose
to build my new cairn
on the foundation of ours.
Matthew 4:1-11
The courage of grocery shopping
among stones,
in times of hunger.
The courage of refusing a parachute
near the map’s edge,
while demons wait.
The courage of letting go
not paying ransom
for all wishes granted,
All these are our daily tasks.
When does death begin?
Before the last breath,
at the diagnosis,
when the symptoms reach consciousness?
A trip and fall in old age,
a desolate, desperate plunge,
as the car skids
on an icy road?
With childhood illness,
at the first breath,
when the sperm
lands on the waiting egg?
When eyes first meet,
as lips and hands touch,
with the grasping embrace
and thrust?
Death begins with life.
This cold house shivers and sheds,
waiting for me to leave
and find my home.
—/
Three texts before breakfast
and into the mist
of the climate change day.
—/
Golden willows on the hillside,
Swollen elm tips across the street:
Spring comes.
– 2019
Sometimes confusion or an unnamed feeling
explodes,
lit by words bursting
into meanings
previously hidden in darkness and silence.
Rejoice:
a part of your brain has
new synopses
shaping your
Mind.
2016
In youth we come through our bodies as explorers
seeking and measuring,
astounded and disappointed
as we grow into ourselves.
In our long midlife, we travel our path,
forgetting and wandering,
sometimes grateful, mostly blindly seeking
the more we yearn for.
Now, our bodies re-astound us:
aching and refusing,
complaining and attacking,
reminding us of time.
I almost wake as I lumber
lurching on sleep-stiff ankles
and return to my night-warmed bed.
In the east, out the window,
I watch the pine boughs shift
and sway and still and shift.
Resting on the next street’s roofs
a pale gold light bleeds upward
behind the narrowing pine,
at the window’s top,
the sky’s grey-white
hints at blue.
Snow -
enough to cover, not to shovel -
squeaks
under my feet.
Bitter cold
burns my cheeks.
Walking alone
is painful.
I raise my face
to the sun.
This terrible comfort
of missing you
woos, wounds
and pushes me,
painfully,
into a new time,
a new way of being.
Excavating our accumulated
structures, sorting
and letting go of what
is not mine is
surgery without sedation:
scars and healing.
Learning Living 