At Seventy
A trajectory of decades crossed like a comet,
years falling like shuffled cards,
now you see them, now you don’t.
Among memories, wisps of me:
hanging by my legs from a trapeze,
pounding the sofa to see germs rise,
praying at age eight to wake up twenty-four,
seeing my father in a coma before he died,
deciding to die at sixty and never grow old,
leading the Pep Club, depressed, in tears,
being eloped from college at eighteen,
imagining my daughter’s third Christmas,
waking at twenty-four, wanting to be eight,
hearing the rabbi bless my second marriage,
communing with a Luna moth in an A-frame.
Moments polka dot my mind
as if I could drop into any one of them,
begin again, take seriously the words I scoffed at
when an old woman watched me hopscotch.
She said, “Count your blessings.”
Hallowed Ground
On a cliff over the Pacific Ocean
a dome at the nuclear plant glows
like a distant cathedral:
both house the almighty
both invite prayer
both can invoke fear
one fences people out
one fences people in.
Free at Last
For Anne and Oscar
Each morning her rescued greyhound
nudges her, knows she needs a walk.
After ambling a few blocks together
she releases him near a field.
Sleek brown and black body,
narrow head and long legs take off
like the Greyhound bus logo,
ready to chase real rabbits.
by Jeanie Greensfelder