ANOTHER MILESTONE

For celebration I would go
to a place where I was happy once
where it is possible to dance
three-legged, nice and slow—

or out into deep winter’s honest air
where love once walked
and with my stick crack open
every ice-clenched puddle there—

maybe I would haunt the bakery aisle
at Stop & Shop, ogle the cakes,
and scare some people I don’t know
with my all- knowing smile.

Forget the presents—my desire
to divest, to simplify, to give away,
and live more quietly a monk-life now
outstrips that old urge to acquire.

So at close of day, a vagrant star
might seem to twinkle loud enough
to seem to ask me how it was
to be here, to have come so far—

I would not know how to reply.
At dusk I would walk home, not
looking back as ice grew once again
on puddles, mirrors to a gridelin sky.
.
.