Approaching Seventy

A spider crawls beneath the screen,
designs a web in the corner and waits
with the patience of a calendar.

This is the end of summer,
scent of decay everywhere in the outside air,


flowers, planted last spring with such
a sense of promise, leaving one by one,
disappearing into the earth.

I think of endings--

final page of a novel
and the characters you've come to love
placed on the shelf,

a wave from a doorway-- those slight
or heavy sadnesses---

friend in Sagaponock the last time I saw her,
waving from the dock as the ferry pulled out
and the wake lengthened between us,

or swells on a stormy crossing,
pine boughs, dark, lifting and falling
in heavy rain, one night of my childhood,

beyond the small stair top bedroom
at my aunt's Vermont inn, as I lay awake--
wood smoke and voices from the lobby below,

a memory of suitcases standing by a farmhouse
front door, milk cans topped with snow, the pale
complexion of my mother who left and didn't return,

memory of lilacs--branches my brother and I used to climb through,
scratching ourselves as we hid from each other--
not long ago, at an airport, we hugged goodbye again--

what I left behind when I moved
to this senior apartment--some feeling of usefulness,
half of my books, most of my clothes.

Sometimes, it feels as if I've said goodbye to everyone.
Through the north window, I watch clouds move off
beyond my vision, and somewhere dissolve into rain.