I hope you are having happy holidays. This is a special time time with family and friends, past and present. My birthday was a big one this year! Of course, a poem.

I wish for you and yours a marvelous New Year and for the world, a year of peace and justice. Thank you for reading my poetry.

Turning Seventy

Another piece of my body cut out.
Instead of being sent to an ossuary,
this part is dissolved into a slurry
with a laser and vacuumed up.
Plastic inserted.
I’ll carry it for the rest of my life.
Its twin in my other eye — coming soon.

The cobalt ball of yarn is brighter.
A distant cypress branch yields a secret nest.
The golden light over my sight
like aged varnish on a Rembrandt,
is gone, replaced by a new sun.

Older age is not only living with loss
after loss —
it’s also earning a new perspective
and a desire to be kinder to myself.
The time to be curious, study
wild parrots in the neighbor’s apples,
listen to tones of bell buoys,
hug my old friends more tightly,
find humor in a new friend’s eyes.

Maybe the kindness I feel
comes from greater patience with life,
less need to get things done.
Patience comes to me now,
when my time is even shorter, a surprise.
I can more clearly eye the Burgundy depths.
My glass is three-quarters full.