I swear they are playing
A small flock of small brown birds
Flits from bending stem to bending stem
Grasses bowing slightly
Springing down when they land
And then up as they soon depart.
And if beaks could break a smile
The true story might be told.
It is a time of richness
A time of many seeds and
In this moment of joy
They eat fully
And fly freely.
I can still run when I want to
If I want to
Although nearing age 66
I mostly plod
Moving slower
Incrementally, entropically
With a bit less enthusiasm for
sprinting
Into oblivion
Or even rising to new challenges
Or the same old ones
(The mere challenge of rising
becoming
More and more apparent)
That horizon seems to be moving
in my direction
At its steady pace…
Maybe I need to check my dipstick
See what level my vital fluids
are at
Perhaps I’m down a quart of
testosterone?
I’m still in the race
At least in my mind
I can access that young man
Who did life so subtly
Effortlessly
Painlessly.
I can still run, when I want
But there is a cost now
A different one, and maybe
higher.
And do I really want to go that
fast
Tempting the wheels to fly off?
Or is it better, wiser
Just to plod?
You can’t blame them
That they are such bearers of bad news
(At least by our selfish assessment)
Vectoring disease while trying
By the powers of nature to do
Exactly what we all try to do;
Live and survive
Propagate and pass along
Our essence.
Born beautiful in their seeming simplicity
They take what they need
And inadvertently pass along others,
Those unclean,
They take too
Our lifeblood becomes theirs and
We are compromised
For their moment of life.
We are stung so that they may grow...
We all take
But just some of us know
The apparent outcome.
We learn to make the crane
Step by step
We fold the blank paper
Which has no meaning save
For its potential
We fold, and shape and give it
Our energy
Our love
And fold and fold and fold again
And there it is at last
As it always had been
The crane which I learned to make
And its peace
Which I am learning to make as well.
Flits from bending stem to bending stem
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