Pen o’ the Woods : The Forest of the Heart

Autumn sunsets full of brilliant, fading color

like pink swans sipping milk

the faintest quivering

flames on the horizon settle and

gentle into a blush of embers

and fade to black as the

wine-dark night drinks in the day–

In this body spinning in this way for five decades,

time slipping by

unhindered and figmentary

in a beginningless stream of samsaric days,

circling round and around the nearest star

—

But now, each day marks time

with a thud. Pages in the Book of Time

keep turning, each one gold embossed

and holding some crucial piece

of the story– every day another

signpost seen,

the air a skosh more

rarefied, every single

miraculous day

another threshold to the next —

and each precious breathing

moment another

sublime

milestone