Poem in Progress: “THIRTY-NINE”

I’m getting old(er), it seems. Another birthday has come and gone.

Below is a a working draft / edition of a vaguely geologically-inspired birthday poem. My upfront apologies to those of my friends who actually understand / study geological sciences. I have no doubt even your (somewhat hardened) sensibilities will be offended at my loose use of your terms and concepts.

 Enjoy:

THIRTY-NINE

–       24, February, 2013

 

one can be

terrible at maths, the hard sciences –

their smugly

proofed precisions and formulaic

 

avowals –

and still acknowledge, perhaps even

 

admire, our

ageing; can countenance its steady slope;

can allow

how it is tears make a difference,

 

how repose

is an issue of angles assumed.

 

how we come

to know failure, not in inerrant

terms – no – but

rather as a matter of degree.

 

how it is

gravity (its sheer stress) is somehow,

 

seemingly,

both absolute and entirely

relative,

at once: how each year’s a talus, manned.

—