Happy Birthday to Me
You might think the years would be a cold stone
pressing us flat to the ground
a burden of one loss after another
certainly no one is left to remember
the day I was born, except my old dad
who is very busy today and old
which truthfully does not matter so much
because the years hold their own in the oddest way,
nothing like a burden
more like tiny birds,
kinglet and nuthatch type birds,
with their knowing eyes and light touch,
with their hop hop from branch to branch
seeking something
finding, oh maybe, maybe not,
and we are the gnarly tree
that supports all that commotion,
all that seeking and finding that goes on
from one season to the next
the way you think you’re not up for it again
and then –
the miniscule heart begins to beat
and the eyes find you
and you’re lost in the life you’ve grown into
how you happened to follow this sun and not that
or let one ripping wind break you and not another,
and that’s what it means, the birds are trying to say,
find a seed and nibble it down,
then, here’s the thing, find another.
RESILIENCE
My mother’s shamrock plant lived for decades
in a painted ceramic pot hung by macramé
from a hook in the back entry
where she kept all her plants until she died
and my father’s care killed most of them
and my Uncle Charlie advised walling in
one whole side to bring down the heating bill
but blocking the kindliest light such that
only the shamrock survived
keeping company with vases of fake flowers
that women liked to give my father in those days
when he was an attractive widower
who loved to dance and putter in his own house
all by himself for the first time in eighty-some years
that sadly charmed era when my mother’s shamrock
lived on no matter what, it’s roots woven tighter
than the macramé all around it
which was all before my father had his stroke
not final like my mother’s but trouble nonetheless
and we moved him far from his home
but close to ours
in the way that well-meaning offspring do
and in the taking of this and that
from one home to the next
I rescued the shamrock
and gave it new soil in a larger clay pot with ruffled edges
placed it on an antique blue and white plate from England
and set it near a southern window where it blooms
in constant tiny white flowers amidst dark green leaves
that do what shamrock leaves are meant to do:
that is to open and close
and open again.
Found Poem 1
Xiphias Gladious
You’ve never seen
a color blue on land
like the color of a swordfish.
If you ever met a girl
with eyes the color
of a swordfish
You’d leave
whoever you were with
and go to her.
Fishing captain in Nova Scotia
Nature Conservatory Magazine
Found Poem 2
Surveying the Room of World War II Veterans
My 91-Year-Old Father Says:
They’re all old.