turning seventy (or not)

This is something I wrote when my friend, Linda Sue, was 55 (more than a few years back) and her son, Erik, was 15. My view of 70 is much different now than it was at 50!

do you realize---
my dear girl
that when your son
has doubled his age
you will be seventy?

he will have a wife
(or not)
several children
all tow-headed and lovely
(or not)
and you will be seventy
(or not)

you might be dead instead
and flying freely among the stars
or riding without a saddle
in a flea circus somewhere
grinning and singing
and leaving the ghost of joy
in your wake

something for the living
to catch in their hands
like fireflies
and crush to their hearts
in remembrance of you

(or not)

you might be alive
and sitting with me
somewhere between
cat spring and utopia
before a dancing fire
smiling at the memory
of all those times
we killed ourselves
using only pens, paper
and dark imaginations

happy now
that we never really
took the leap
or took ourselves
too seriously

your hair a sterling silver
mine dyed a rusty red
we'd breakfast on blackberries
that the bears had overlooked
and wait for your son
and those tow-headed
kids of his
to come knocking
on our door...

(or not)

* * * * * * *

the goldfish

i planted him today
fishy eye
staring as usual
how horrible
to spend your life
lidless
unable to shut out
unpleasantness
or to sleep in darkness

but he sleeps in
the dark now
buried
along with a cousin of his
beneath a bristly fern
ready to give
what is left
of himself
to a new life
just beginning

his body swims in
the dirt now
once-fluid tail
stiffened like
a corn husk
once-glimmering armor
tarnished and dull

out of his element
out of his body
I wonder if he's
paddling serenely
somewhere now
without the
delicate
little oars
he left behind...

* * * * * * *