AT SEVENTY

You don’t see yourself

in the morning mirror

anymore. And you tell

yourself you’re disloyal,

that you have a tin ear,

and can’t tell irony

from kvetch. So what?

At seventy, you no longer

expect old friends

to love you, and you’re

sick of stories of the past

because they no longer

matter. Nor do

the day-long silences

that sometimes fall on

you like a cool rain.

But you can’t stop there.

To get it exactly right,

you have to stand before

the window, before

the great scrim of sunlight

falling through the woods;

the green wall of leaves:

oak, hickory, feathery

hackberry, the wild cherry;

the dogberry fruiting;

darting shadows of birds;

hearing the thick rush of

wild flowers down the damp

slope; tasting the bitter

bite of black, thrice-

boiled, late-morning coffee.

Good luck’s your wife’s

laughter. And the yellow-

eyed, grey smoke cat,

der Meistersinger

, who

keeps a clock in his belly

and knows what time it is.

And your small, muscular,

green-eyed, clouds-on-milk

cat, who seeks, each day

on the living room floor,

the exact center of the universe,

give or take an inch

or two, east or west, north

or south, curling herself

under on it, folding in

her long paws, bouldering in,

as if to mark it clearly,

hold it firmly in place.