In the interest of recusing myself

from the intentional acts of living in

salience and satisfaction,

I remove paper clips from bundles

and places of collecting –

days not yet taken,

things taken too often,

conversations unfinished,

gazes left unyielded to awe.

And I forget to wait.

In the interest of restraining myself

from the morbidity of beloved melancholy

I reach across heavens of tear-stained songs

and their owners, too shy to keep singing –

and touch the lips of those like me,

who might never have sung

were it not for those heaven-kissed notes.

And I forget to wait.

In the interest of reinventing myself

I recall to mind the person least reticent

to dance naked before the large window –

unblinking, shameless with wanton wit;

those long-wished for days not yet cast aside.

Not forgotten, merely unremembered.

A bold and chivalrous persona void of

the self-effacement unknown in our youth.

And I forgot to wait.

On the occasion of my fifty-fifth birthday.

____________________

No, I am not as old as

the wilting membrane of earth –

the skin of her secrets, too tightly

breast-held and leaky.

No, I am not as old as last

winter’s back-porch bread crumbs,

now frozen in cracks of concrete

and flaking paint.

No, I am not as old as the clock,

heavy in memory and fingerprints –

evidenced in her calloused hands.

No, I am not as old as the long-

faded colour now framing the painting’s

place – a reminiscence tucked in

a reminiscence. The irony of old beauties.

No, I am not as old as the tales and

fables, born wild and then loosed

in the telling, fermenting into 

many-tongued song.

No, I am not as old as the coughing

farm truck, grizzled metal and clogged

arteries, belching orders under

a hollow back, still unbroken.

No, I am not as old as the cathedral

stone, serenely quiet in the preachy

way of ancient things always new.

I am just old enough to love, and

to start again.