For now, I’m feeling younger than my years.
I’m noting painless days, agility,
and optimistic attitude. What rears
in me for now is positivity.
Although I have concerns, no freight appears
to press me down, and flexibility
is even better than the breadth I seek.
I take no prisoners, at least this week.
If there’s a theme for this July,
I say the word is “prune.”
I’m daily shearing plants to try
to own my garden. Soon
the weeds will lose their ground. And I
am shredding a lagoon
of paper. Anti-multiply
is my motif since June.
Among descendants, there are issues now.
One has a mystery disease of eye.
Another seems amnesiac on how
to handle money, budget, or apply
parental strategy. A third won’t try
a path to health without a doctor’s fix.
I turn to pruning plants and prose, and sigh:
amazed I’m well at 10 past 66.
The word was “sexercise.” The mode was text.
The seatmate on her plane was fun at first.
But what a move he opted to make next:
unwitty and unsubtle, like the worst
he voiced when young. His posture, as he nursed
his cocktail and confessed he’d done some harm
and made mistakes in life, should have reversed
her hopes. It’s clear the asshole lacks all charm.
An imperfection in a favorite book
(less glaring than the one in Fielding’s tome),
impressing me so much, because it took
a hundred reads and screenings to perceive,
does not decrease my pleasure. I’ll still look
with admiration at the plot and words,
but take a mote of comfort I can brook
defects in my own produce, prose or poem,
with stamina and style unforsook.
The view this morning from my living room
is dappled sun beneath a twining vine,
conveying coolness, smoothness through a loom
of photosynthesis. Such comfort’s mine,
I feel provoked. I take it as a sign
of natural love, of vegetation’s kiss.
Right now I’m feeling well, alert and fine,
and hope to recognize more days like this.
I’m calling it arthritis in my knee,
though I possess no medical degree.
But I retain a patient memory
of diagnosis and failed therapy,
three decades past. It’s giving tweaks to me
on rising but it likes activity.
I’m four years shy of 80 now, and nurse
the knee myself, in hopes it won’t grow worse.
Magnificent as mountain vistas are,
commanding as the ocean tends to be,
I seldom have to travel long or far
to be enchanted with the scenery
encountered walking in my neighborhood,
in shades of weather-tempered greenery.
I stride with butterflies. The ways are good.
I pocket nature’s kind gratuity.
My gardener is missing working weeks.
The man’s unwell and though I think he’ll mend,
for now I’m not portraying one who seeks
to hire expertise. For I intend
to daily do a bit. The pokeweed speaks
each morning, even now too strong to bend,
while I regard its toxic berried height.
Four limbs a day I hack, to see some light.
So do I dare present this piece of work
to him, to read and ponder? Is it fair?
I plumbed my recall, inking like a clerk.
So do I dare?
I stripped away the fluff and didn’t spare
my ego, or the father’s rolling jerk.
I tried to lay the circumstances bare.
But mostly I dispelled the irksome murk.
I hope I give, he reads, we clear the air.
I’m striving to defeat what legends lurk.
So do I dare?
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