Flesh

It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t all go on without you.
These inhabited days, the no-see-ums of the fifth arrondissement
that bit us all summer, the hard fact of time hauling us forward lit.
This is the nth year of my life and so far it’s not the last
and so far it’s not the sweetest but it is because life is sweet.
Swept out with the tide we’ll be, beached even
as the mornings keep chirping on and suddenly.
We will miss the ice storm, we’ll be gone before the blizzard,
we’ll lie down in the dark forever just bones.
But Monday says off with you ok,
and M is backpacked up and come on boys,
and in the cloth of fall into the wind toward the first day
of September, yielding again forward swept—
into the not-young we go awhile before ghosting the old.
Mommy in midlife is she nonperishable? Of course not.
Let’s play full speed ahead with the bright souvenirs of this day.
Wasn’t I a hapless one. Fundamentally mental.
Watching days go by this life not knowing how to do it.
Watching the boys turn ten then teenage then.
The new baby girl a surprise that grew up too.
Intricate past numb present and the future which narrows
all of us into a shovel of dirt.
This is my fifth book of poems. I had my way with each of them.
I looked up and I was older than my mother ever ever ever was.

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