This poem was written shortly after I arrived at Noepe, in Martha’s Vineyard (where the picture, above, was taken).
A meditation of sorts (I hesitate, mostly out of denial, to call it a mid-life reckoning!), this particular poem was inspired by a long walk past a farm (and a close encounter with a hostile rooster) and toward the beach, thinking about the things one thinks of on such occasions…if one is poetically inclined and more than a little self-conscious about ostensible middle-age.
Serendipitous, and appreciated, to receive notification –just after turning 48– that this poem was a finalist (3rd place) in the Poetry Matters Project 2018 competition.
Awards mean much less than the satisfaction of seeing an idea through (however imperfectly) to completion, then being able to share it.
Work-in-Progress
Closer to fifty now than forty, but who’s keeping count?
You are, because you’ve learned, over time, nothing is
Forever—life a brief conferral of Nature or Fortune.
All we know is everything
we won’t remember.
Our bodies do become temples after all,
fortresses constructed to split the balance
between routines and revisions,
experience and epiphany.
A fresh wave softens the sand every few seconds, yet
it requires centuries of this ritual
to create coastlines.
All insects measure their work in moments, but
without their frenzied industry everything
we know would cease.
A human womb requires nine months to nurture a birth,
this precise sequence an eternity of evolution at play.
The slow motion of a child’s summers will become
snapshots, manufactured by machines
designed to maintain memories.
Our systems stagnate and expire
like light from extinguished stars.
The sun’s eventual implosion will surprise
the beings it sustained, and all things
inexorably return to the earth, reclaimed
and restored: an overture
for the events yet to come.
The calculus of ego and anniversary mutually
oblige more immediate concerns, and
consciousness inquires:
What have you done to savor your allotment?
What have you done to advance our awareness?
What have you done to propagate the accord?
What are you doing to commemorate this life?
