Thank you again Tony. Your work never fails to inspire me.
Originally written in 1999.
In the year I turned thirty nine
the peonies did not die
quite the same way
as the peonies always had before
In the year I was thirty-eight
the fragile man I was then
looked at the peonies
in the backyard
The progress of the year
seemed so fast
I thought about how quickly
those pink and white heads
would droop and drop their petals
fade and decay
I feared that if the year of thirty-eight
continued this pace into
my years of forty forty-one forty-two and beyond
every thing I had learned
by putting myself together
would come undone
But then in the year
I was thirty nine
I learned that in remembering
the scent of peony
the heat of their pink
the regal ice of their white
in all these memories
there was enough of youth to make
my mortality irrelevant
I learned that thirty nine was an opening and not
an end…
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poetry, photos and musings oh my! 