Reflections on My Eighty-Third Birthday

Once I plucked a silver strand of tinsel
from my head of chocolate-coffee hair…
so pretty on December’s tree, this filament,
strung with winking lights along a dying pine.

Once I crawled a labyrinth of time and age
emerging from birthmother’s businesslike womb
to engage, as decades passed, in acts of disbelief;
regarding grey as owned by vague, unlucky others.

Once I framed a portrait of my grandmother
inside measurements of the bedroom mirror…
elderly images of clocks and calendars, turning,
lost as ill-fitting identities best left to dreamtime.