shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

James Hickson


 

On Turning Sixty

Up in the stone tower at the open window
I adjust the telescope seaward and there
I spy a speck pinned against the horizon:
That was your youth, a green dot drifting away.

The lemon-colored hills remain between the houses
If you look the other way between
The mirth and anger within their walls,
But now small white boats are coming in
Fishless and muttering like even older men.

High in the cypress limbs the wind murmurs
And then its voice turns strangely familiar
And begins to sound like song.