twenty­/twenty

(Published Yellow Moon Literary Magazine)

 

a moment of truth

in an hazy atmosphere

covering the sun

this indian summer

is perchance my final trek

 

uphill the weight

of many albatrosses

has thinned my hair

yet confetti ­colored leaves

cascade down the mountainside

 

along this charade

a splay of spruce needles

in the autumn wind

their range more flexible

than my rheumatic knees

 

now mockingly

an amber dragonfly taunts

my aging eyes

no longer twenty­/twenty

I opt for binoculars

 

back home at last

it's another sleepless night

but a bit more time

to revise the death poem

saved in my drafts folder