On the Wonder of Reaching 70

Old age

Tastes of memory,

-of snowflakes 

and Guiness -

frosty syrup softening 

December gray of hair 

and dreams

Warming waning bones.

Wrapped,

Tinseled,

Beribboned and bestrewn

In cloves and wistfulness

Wrinkling sated tongue with 

dusk’s sweet grief

A gleam on papery skin

-So thin-

that blood and breath

mingle in a singular sigh

So brief replete.

Winter song

Tiny Leaves, flit and flitter

spangling the sky with 

iridescent applause,

frost tinselling their jazz-hands.

A dainty calligraphy 

of delight,

despite 

winter’s piccolo glissade

where high-c gales

drift, like sifting leaves,

sliding down in measured cadence

until

bass notes muffle 

leaf-strewn ground

And icicles of light

Lift and lilt

in falsetto key,

clinging and singing 

between branches of

shredding trees

wind chimes of winter.