I mostly run on gravel roads,
the kind that promise solitude
and dust.
My pace has slowed,
as has most of life,
become more of a quiet watching
than a frenzied doing.
I am less watched and measured,
a trend that suits my comfort with age.
Poetry
Five
Five can be
An awkward number,
Sharp edges and curves
All at once.
There is nothing even
And measured
With five,
One side always outnumbers the other,
One partnerless outlier.
But five is prime,
Divisible only by itself
From the inside.
Within this is power,
An ability to be cohesive
And whole that not every
Number possesses.
Five must be chosen,
Nurtured.
Choose wisely.
Poetry
Laundry
No one
Has done my laundry
In the last forty four
Years.
Awake before the sun,
I have washed and folded
Underwear with kangaroo
Pockets for
Kangaroos I have never wished
To see.
Turned right side out
The smallest of socks
And largest of shirts,
Shaken out wrinkles
And ironed out old
Creases.
Sometimes I am lost in
The piles of neatly
Folded remnants of your days,
A well heeled servant
Of ages gone by,
Those I thought
We had long since
Overcome.
Poetry
Hands
I look at your hands,
And then at mine.
A contrast so stark
And subtle all at once.
Yours shaped nails exquisitely
Painted in the newest shade,
Mine trimmed with my teeth
Just yesterday after catching
On the garden gate.
Hands speak volumes,
The seeds sown,
and songs played,
Love shared and worries wrung.
Mine will never be sheik.
I am not moved
To become other.
My seeds are sown,
My trees planted,
To live beyond the time
That I will see.
Poetry
March 24, 2023
Mortality stares us
In the face,
Refusing to blink.
The long sought respite
From life as a daily grind
So short.
I watch as you move about the room,
A body aging and a mind
So barely beginning to grasp
What it means to be alive.
One will doubtless need to
Carry on without the other,
A lone sentinel of the
World that flourishes
Between us.
Poetry
May 25, 2022
It was inevitable. Time added to gravity exponentially slid skin and muscle perpetually downward, piling up at knees, wagging under arms. Fearing refugee status, pounds jumped and clung to waist lines and muffin tops, hanging over pants. It wasn’t the clothes. They acted appropriately. It was the flesh that became delinquent and ornery. Criminal. Such is aging at its surface. Not so down deep. There we age with grace, wiser and more eloquent. Beautiful and full. Grateful for the breadth and breath of each day.
Poetry
November 27, 2021
It is the quiet of the night, millions of diamonds thrown in the dark sky, a twinkling canopy for the dancing trees. I can not sleep. The waterfall of wonderings wash through my head, the questions of the ages honed and clear. I try to take your place, to be your thoughts and fears. There is a certain loneliness to living none can escape. A striving to be brave in the face of so many unknowns our hearts are broken. If you watch long enough, the diamonds will arc through the sky toward something we can never know, much less remember. I wonder what it would be to last forever, a diamond bright star in the quiet of the night.
Poetry
Thanksgiving, 2021
Memories float easily this morning across the delicate frost. It is one of those days, chosen from many, to circle on the calendar. Perhaps it should be every day, though we would each weigh more than elephants. Your smiling face would light the midnight sky, your embrace warm an Arctic snow. You will be this always, a spreading, fiery wit to warm this day and every. The sun is chasing the moon on it’s own horizon, this magic hour soon passing. The circular nature of time will keep us always together. For this, I sing thanksgiving.