the ochre leaves

We are all the same age inside

Gertrude Stein

the night breathes above me,

sighing through the trees

and I think,

so,

I am sixty...

never mind,

never mind

I mutter

gazing at the ochre leaves

twirling in the dark,

and I remember...

me 
in the time before the time

when quiet indifference

gathered coolly about me,

like snow 

in an endless winter

when the sun dazzled off me

like I was made of that same chrome

as those fords, and chevys, and buicks,

those ponderous dinosaurs,

rolling along the streets,

roaming under the towering elms

in that lovely, glistening summer

when I was so young that I did not know how

to worry

and the leaves rattle above me in the night,

and I ask them...

let me try again.