bee-buzzed blooms
wilt white into winter —
hellish heavy heat
silently softens to snow —
lovely lustrous leaves
fall freckled in frost —
senescent slanting sun
solstices southward —
the young year yules
dizzily debarks december
age & aging
Precarious
Aging is millions of moments
stacked upon tumbling years
Losing count
Damnit! I binged
again II day
IV life was hard
and so I
VIII my stress away.
O why do I so of X gorge?
Since turning XL
I’ve been extra large.
Self-conviction
when you live too hard
forty is a warning
fifty, penalty
Sound of winter leaves at night
Age is a foreign land I can’t get used to. I want to go back home.
Serenity & grace
when I fall into old age
let it be not a drunkenly
face-first tumble but rather
an autumn leaf gracefully
drifting from the tree —
or if we ascend into our
older years please let me
soar and not be flung
Brimming
Time pours his guests a cup of tea but the party is over before we know it.
Eye floaters
snakes and worms
squiggles and sperms
phantom insects
crawling, free-falling
Branching
this winter afternoon
i stare between bare
branches of gray trees
in the distance i see
an unreturnable past
or a dwindling future
i can’t tell which but
the silence is sublime
Wizen
but on the bright side
middle age aridity
concentrates essence
Liftoff
believing my wings were fragile and fractured
in my formidable forties, i abandoned
approaching fifty, i know my wings are strong
they just cannot lift so many heavy
I stand amid the dust
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
—Francis Thompson, from “The Hound of Heaven,” 1890
Playground
We mature in knowledge and wisdom but never leave the playground of our hearts.