Figuring Out Life While Aging
Credo 2
I have lived long enough
to understand
I will die;
I choose
to delight
in moments
of bright joy.
In the early morning light
I surrender
to the glory of June.
In the morning breeze
branches move and sway
while their shadows
dance
in the sunlight.
In the quiet of solitude
I am
alive.
Leaves
in sunlight and shadow:
a harmony of greens,
plus the bass notes
of pine.
June reaches
into hope
set free by beauty:
a green time
thrusting into more life.
When you have touched an other’s
pulsating heart
and felt the difficult path
they’re walking on,
pity becomes respect.
We are all
unreliable witnesses,
sorting and resorting
our memories
crafted from
what we couldn’t see
(then or now,)
as we pin each reshaped story
to our current consciousness.
Who are you? My enemy?
Or another searching soul
lost in your own
wilderness,
your own storms?
Dawn
Through a dusty screen,
black branches on rosy gold:
morning awaits me.
Spring
Lilacs are leafing
and blossoms budding, green mist
coating trees across the road.
A streak of rosy gold
behind black pines:
the grace of a day beginning.
The silence of a Sunday morning
with lilacs in exquisite bloom
and a squirrel moving under the bush:
time passes and releases
the fragrance of memory
and ghosts of the past.
The insistent alarm
and furnace sounds ---
I open my eyes and,
out my window, see
young leaves, sun-touched,
sway, disturbed by a squirrel.
I stand hesitantly
and move stiffly
into another morning,
accepting the gift
of this time
and place.
Black winged and gold-tipped
butterflies, and I
feed from the lilacs’ fragrance
and mourn
in this secular wilderness
as I map out my day.
With the silence of light in darkness,
with the yearning for tenderness
of an obedient child,
the compounding of grief
and relief
releases
comforting perfume:
scars and other gifts
that have awakened me
in a forgiving world.
—/
The delightful impermanence
of sunlit flickering shadows
shows me a path
out of the fearful
cave, out into
the blue-skyed green-leafing
world,
where storms can pass,
and living through them
teaches the beauty of joy.
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.
Learning Living 