I've been keeping a personal tradition for a few years now. I write at least one poem every birthday season about having that birthday. I title them by their simple, sobering, and gently encouraging number. For this year, may I present this afternoon's sudden inspiration, #47:
#47
Yard work this afternoon for a gathering
tonight. My wife has planned something
for my forty-seventh birthday. I’m a few
pounds heavier than last year, resenting
the trend of a little breathlessness with work,
but balancing in early spring’s amazement,
of that late March warmth that never fails us.
I lean on the rake, lift my eyes to the sun.
It is the middle time. Bookended between blood
and glory. Yesterday, the best of Fridays.
Tomorrow. The inevitable, even for stones.
A crow calls up past my closed lids.
And another. I look to search them out,
up in the yet sprung greens, in the dark
streaks yet on the day’s cloudless word.
They hop and float, intersecting the sun
and my view, two flashes rapturing through
the glide of feathers, shadowing over my face.
I’d never seen this shade of red,
I’ve never seen such shades of red.
It's fully confessional. I was working outside, etc, etc,. My wife is throwing me a "Party Like It's 1969" costume party tonight. We're all supposed to inhabit the soul of some famous person of that era, preferably of that lovely and chaotic year.
I've lived - since I could own an opinion on such mystical things - under the impression that we bring with us certain aspects of the times under which we were produced. The DNA of the culture, not just our physical make-up. A lot was happening in 1969 that I've leaned back on. I'm an Aries. I've adopted the Ram's stubbornness. The astrological sign's make-up. I've grown into a Mar's fetish in my writing. Red is a major color hue in my art work when painting. I've always had a fascination with the Vietnam War and my father's involvement there during his deployment in 67 and 68, right before I was born. In grade school, as I got ready for catching the bus every morning, he fed us a steady stream of Hendrix, The Beatles, George Benson, and BB King. If, then, we're time capsules of preferred years of concentration, I cannot deny the year I was born, though I can claim very little of having lived in it in the traditional ways, though I feel as if I can think back to it as if being there.
Going back a year to #46, this is where my head was then:
#46
A year now, on with the forty-sixth,
bolstered by the Ides,
embattled lately and wrestling the physics of the inevitable,
another damn birthday, fully visible in its approach,
bolder than usual, though, but
just as threatening
and potentially deadly.
Jonquil winter rolling in from the north,
spring hasn’t won
quiet yet, but it tries. Crocuses come and gone,
their purples and yellows gone to sleep
two weeks hence.
The Resurrection right around the corner.
Again with spring it seems, again with Easter threaded in, am I predictable or the season? I feel more positive this year. And I am. Good things have happened. A little heavier? True. Heavier with possibility. And though that's an overdone metaphor, it works for me. Besides, tonight I'm sort of an semi-overweight pre-overdosed and deceased Jim Morrison poet/rocker. Perfect. I'll have pictures, don't worry.
Happy Birthday to us all.
#47
Yard work this afternoon for a gathering
tonight. My wife has planned something
for my forty-seventh birthday. I’m a few
pounds heavier than last year, resenting
the trend of a little breathlessness with work,
but balancing in early spring’s amazement,
of that late March warmth that never fails us.
I lean on the rake, lift my eyes to the sun.
It is the middle time. Bookended between blood
and glory. Yesterday, the best of Fridays.
Tomorrow. The inevitable, even for stones.
A crow calls up past my closed lids.
And another. I look to search them out,
up in the yet sprung greens, in the dark
streaks yet on the day’s cloudless word.
They hop and float, intersecting the sun
and my view, two flashes rapturing through
the glide of feathers, shadowing over my face.
I’d never seen this shade of red,
I’ve never seen such shades of red.
It's fully confessional. I was working outside, etc, etc,. My wife is throwing me a "Party Like It's 1969" costume party tonight. We're all supposed to inhabit the soul of some famous person of that era, preferably of that lovely and chaotic year.
I've lived - since I could own an opinion on such mystical things - under the impression that we bring with us certain aspects of the times under which we were produced. The DNA of the culture, not just our physical make-up. A lot was happening in 1969 that I've leaned back on. I'm an Aries. I've adopted the Ram's stubbornness. The astrological sign's make-up. I've grown into a Mar's fetish in my writing. Red is a major color hue in my art work when painting. I've always had a fascination with the Vietnam War and my father's involvement there during his deployment in 67 and 68, right before I was born. In grade school, as I got ready for catching the bus every morning, he fed us a steady stream of Hendrix, The Beatles, George Benson, and BB King. If, then, we're time capsules of preferred years of concentration, I cannot deny the year I was born, though I can claim very little of having lived in it in the traditional ways, though I feel as if I can think back to it as if being there.
Going back a year to #46, this is where my head was then:
#46
A year now, on with the forty-sixth,
bolstered by the Ides,
embattled lately and wrestling the physics of the inevitable,
another damn birthday, fully visible in its approach,
bolder than usual, though, but
just as threatening
and potentially deadly.
Jonquil winter rolling in from the north,
spring hasn’t won
quiet yet, but it tries. Crocuses come and gone,
their purples and yellows gone to sleep
two weeks hence.
The Resurrection right around the corner.
Again with spring it seems, again with Easter threaded in, am I predictable or the season? I feel more positive this year. And I am. Good things have happened. A little heavier? True. Heavier with possibility. And though that's an overdone metaphor, it works for me. Besides, tonight I'm sort of an semi-overweight pre-overdosed and deceased Jim Morrison poet/rocker. Perfect. I'll have pictures, don't worry.
Happy Birthday to us all.