How do I grow old while
remaining articulate?
My blood wants to know.
My cilia.
My frontal lobe.
Also my bones.
Also my pen.
I want to be literate
and literally alive.
As an infant I had no words
for the festival of occurrences,
all the comforts and disturbances
landing lingering leaving,
eruptions of organic delight.
After feasting for years on the dictionary
I am able at last to note closing events.
Swimming waters of grief.
I write.
Hearing echoes of gladness.
I write.
Mind seeping memories.
I write.
Now in old age with words,
I have time to release experience
from the prison of silence.
All I need to say,
I need to say right now.
My dream,
to catch on the fly:
the rosy voice of sunset,
the velvet voice of twilight,
the husky voice of midnight,
the whisper of withdrawing dark at dawn.