to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together

nearing 60 I’m told I am young

relative

I get it though

as I linger in the final weeks before the turn

this is remarkably

stunningly

different that two decades before

I like the idea Oliver Sachs posits

that this decade now

well for him it was two more on yet still

is here for the collection and binding

of one’s life to the tether of breath we all hold

so that some day when the soil plinks upon the wooden surface

or the ashen dust folds along the windswept hills

we’ll have closed the door gently eloquently

peacefully onto the shores of our one life

in time to share it with another