THE DISCOVERY
On walking, in my seventies, down a leafy street
behind two women in their early forties who
are chatting to each other as companionably
as birds on a limb, and having thought, with
happy anticipation, ah, I’ll be their age soon!
it occurs to me that I’ve lost my mind—but
just then the clouds evanesce and light pours
through the oaks and ash, to form lace on
the pavement lovely enough to be sewn
into dresses, and I see that time is as
random as the patterns the sun makes on
any given day as it filters through leaves,
and as illusory as a baby being born, and
as strange as the years of our lives that
go by without returning, and as equal as
the one friend’s auburn hair and the red leaf
she steps over, which the wind has abandoned
for love of her. And now, having finally
seen that the world is every minute new,
I realize that I’m only a little younger than
those women after all, and I step between
them, and we speak as we walk, and by
the time we part, each of us in her own way
has told the others how lucky she is,
to have been alive in such a beautiful place.
—from Rattle #70, Winter 2020
__________
Lola Haskins: “Poems, other people’s, and when I get really lucky, mine, have connected me with sisters, brothers, and angels, more deeply than I have ever been connected by blood to anyone. Besides, the high of finally getting myself clear on the page’s field is so addictive I can’t imagine ever stopping trying. In other words, it doesn’t matter how frustrating it is when it doesn’t work because it’s so sublime when it does. All of you out there who write will know what I mean.” (web)
