Almost Fifty-One

Almost Fifty-One


Here, a toast to midnight
in the new moon of September,
so dark to show the glistening stars,
listening to cicadas and crickets,
critters In the prime of their life—

By November
they will have joined
the collective
energy called gone . . . .

I was born in November,
and often wonder if it
was a cold day
when they brought me home.

Green abounds around me now—
By the next full moon
it will explode to a kaleidoscope
of earthiness, like my worried friends, wearing
the end of their days too—
so colorful.