What of birthdays?
What are they for?
Advent of days,
stuffed diaries
to be read at Thanksgiving,
some holiday
when you are bored
and the sea doesn’t speak to you.
Columns erected stone by stone
cut from your life,
porticos for old age.
My birthday is the custom
of candles,
a bonfire, burning prairie,
smoke and innocence.
In age I can’t breathe enough
to blow them out.
I marvel at the years I’ve lived,
the questions inside me,
the well of so much love,
the harvest of the pure child
whose candle burned in the rain.
So, to everyone’s birthday
I raise a toast,
and if they’re wise
perhaps they’ll tell me
the reason for another.
I’m ready to begin again,
brand new,
except in my case there’s one
I’d like to take with me,
an old love
that deserves to be new,
and for her
I endure,
for her
I’ll go on forever.