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Old
— After Anne Sexton's "Young"
Ten thousand yawns from now
when I am a bent question mark
and the children are busy living
and a push of a buzzer
summons the night nurse,
I will drag my oxygen tank trolley
—resistant like a leashed mutt—
across sticky linoleum
to peek between drawn blinds
and squint to find Orion,
the Big Dipper and his little friend
and remember a beach in Rhodes
where stars littered the sky
like luminescent river stones
so big, so close
we could pluck them
from the heavens,
offer them to each other
like promises and the universe
seemed—like our lives—
to roll on forever.
We had few questions
and the sky seemed full
of answers, some hurtling
like arrows into the future.
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