NOW, A Sonnet on My 73rd Birthday

There's nothing there we haven't seen before,

But not so many times we can afford 

To hustle past. Let's promise each other --

Never commit the sin of being bored.

Besides, so much has changed in just a year.

The sun-rustled air seems even clearer.

The pattern of the leaves left in the trees

(Yes, the postcard days ended yesterday),

Suggests paragraphs full of ideas,

Things we think but never think to say.

The colors play the best part of the scene,

And we must grant each leaf its final bow.

If we could stay to watch the last careen

To the ground, we might settle then at Now.

New, Sonnet #604

Now is perpetually new:

My hands in dishwater soap,

Or two hawks locked in mews

In air that inhales, exhales hope —

Nothing is always out of scale,

Nor is every metaphor stale.

There’s no trick to all of this,

No existential treatise.

A moment is a moment’s kiss

We perpetually miss.

The dishes are clean and dried,

No matter how hard we tried

To ignore them in their dirty sink:

Little that we knew we now think.