The doctor prescribed a device
To practice stretching my lungs.
I catch a glimpse of
My shark dead left eye,
Monocular, in the bathroom mirror.
What damage to my brain
Allows my right eye–believing
it is engaged in life–
To catch my dead eye?
I can’t breathe deeply enough.
Ancestors in my family
(mostly women–the men are heathens)
believed that when the Turkey Vultures
roosted in the trees,
the lower they roosted
the greater chance of a death nearby.
It was not always a person.
Sometimes a pet or a milk cow.
I have been feeling a step or two
closer to death all winter,
but with the return of the Vultures
and the very late hints of an actual Spring,
I have felt Death’s silent retreat.
She understands her eventual victory
and she is satisfied to be patient.
The Buzzards have been working the back roads
now that the snow is gone,
especially in the ditches by the two lanes.
Winter has conspired
to preserve and to age
deer carcasses
and the hairy lumps of raccoons and opossums.
The Raptors survived the snow that lingered
after their arrival
on a predictable fare of flat squirrels.
The Old Ones are patient too.
All day they have wheeled high in the sky.
They constantly survey eight square miles.
They watch and they wait.
They understand their inevitable victory as well.
They come from miles to roost in loose communities.
They wheel in from on high
in tight arcs, left and right.
They depend on smaller currents,
Invisible to us.
A precise and studied aerial ballet,
they spill air from powerful wings,
which if provoked
can break a man’s forearm,
wheel tight through branches.
Again spill wind,
drop the back of the wing to slow speed, spill air,
drop the black curtains of feathers,
to hug the air to breast and
to stop
with no visible support.
To step
off the wind onto the branch
more than halfway to the top of the tree.
Folding wings, they squat motionless,
hunching their shoulders into the last fading rays of the sun,
black, slender lumps on the limbs of leafless trees.
They sleep
and dream Vulture dreams
of warmer days
and bounty.
Before knowing
There is not knowing.
We bumble along
In our ignorance
Like a bee bypassing a flower
And we care not–
Because we know not.
Then suddenly we know.
Ignorance is torn,
Like a worn garment
discarded.
We bumble on
With the new known.
But for some few of us,
There is the new not known.
That which was known
Is known no more.
We no longer know the flower.
The scent is foreign.
Genus and Species slide back
Into unknowing.
This nectar is not known,
And then nectar is not known.
I love smoked meats.
It takes a little extra prep
And slow heat for a long time.
It’s harder than blasting a piece of protein with high flame
Then gnawing through it,
Poking it down with microwaved green beans.
But I have adjusted. Maybe I have more time.
Or I’m willing to spend it more slowly.
Who invented the 2 minute hug?
And how did we muddle through without it?
The old hugs saved us 117 seconds a day,
About 58 minutes a month
Almost twelve hours a year,
But we missed too much.
My heart doesn’t know what it is doing for at least 15 seconds.
It’s all brain and intention at first (and awkwardly self-conscious)
Until I open. It takes more than one try sometimes.
Holding hands in front of the television?
Is anything quite as much of a cliché?
My shows, your shows, our shows.
Your hand, with that active thumbnail,
Wiggling and jiggling on my cuticle?
My fingertip pad, running over the ridges in your fingernail.
The dog practices hand-hold interruptus,
Rubbing the web between your thumb and forefinger,
Making my finger multitask, scratching a dog ear to keep the peace.
There are no instructions for retirement.
So much of my day is spent waiting.
Tamoxifen insists on your daily naps
When we can make them happen.
I spend considerable time waiting to be with you.
And then we play Jeopardy.
We aren’t quite as good as we used to be.
Our inappropriate behavior.
Laughing at our own aphasia.
Ridiculing the loss of the keys, my glasses, a toothbrush.
Calling it “getting lucky” when I catch you naked from the shower.
Talking you down from an insult hurled at you at work.
You telling me to stop watching Fox News.
Carving out a life after all.
No one warned I’d have trouble swinging a hammer
Or climbing ladders.
That your thumb would refuse to open a canning jar,
That I would have to wait for a good day to trim my toenails,
That a good night’s sleep is nine consecutive forty-five minute naps
Interrupted by the urgent need to pee.
The Fibonacci dance.
After these decades
We finally know, a little,
About co-navigating our space and time.
You with me
Me with you
You with yourself
And me with me.
As we play for time,
We are finding the exquisite rhythms.
Haiku
The older I get,
The slower each day passes,
But years seem to rush.