A CERTAIN AGE

“Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light.”
—Goethe

It has been said the weather is bright blue
this time of year.  A tinge of cobalt cools
the contours, copper trembles, sounding true.
Red and golden maple leaves, the motley fools,
die dancing on a breeze of nevermore.
Those who must learn go back to schools.

The year was started long before
this current, nearer to the final, page
of curling calendar behind the closet door;
yet blood, air, the purple-kissed greengage
belie that paper rubric and bestir unnerving
promise in what’s more than come of age.

Cliché favors youth, the tight uncurving
blade of spring, bronze beauty at the beach,
the summer’s salad days all undeserving.
And youth favors cliché, believing each
grey hint of winter is a closing down,
smug in its grasp of things beyond its reach.

We’ve been there.  Now we’re here, my frown,
searching a spattered mirror for small clues
to an unsettling ripening.  We grope for nouns
to name it—for the way so many hues
exquisitely become a potent reticence of brown.
.
.
A CERTAIN AGE

BY THE TIME YOU WAKE UP, YOUR HAIR WILL BE WHITE

…you will own the biblical hoary head.  Your
tree will know how oddly a branch may grow to
sapless, brittle treachery.  Fear alone will
threaten to break it.

Most of those who loved you are dead.  Their absence
shadows, haunts remembering.  No one living
slows to listen really or hear your story.
If you should tell it.

Breath of the morning, beautiful new forgiveness,
not a thought to limit or change or end it–
noon afire with promises, now a rush to
flushingly spend it–

all will come to evening.  You are not of
your time; you are your time.  A shutter
opens, closes, light on a nervous mothwing
fluttering briefly.

BY THE TIME YOU…

A LUSTROUS ROBE AND WINGS

What itinerant sculptor might have come
with mittten hands, skulking along
the deadly cold last night
to craft this frozen work
beside the naked rhododendron?

Incredible, but there it is:
a clump of ice where no cause,
roof drip or avalanche, no plausible
reshaping of water might occur.
It scares me with uncanniness.

Arising from the snowbank,
a lustrous robe with wings,
it is as if a small glass angel
just awoke, arose and stood
in readiness for flying home.

It doesn’t even have a face
or feet, I notice, staring hard.
Which really does’t matter.
Suggestion has become
matter enough.  Enough

so ice and light
are making me a fool
and a believer, briefly,
I will someday see
an even stranger world.