For 20 years now, I've watched
the long, slow slant of sunlight
as it cuts low across the neighbor's roof
and slices along the flower beds.
This winter, however, the deck is new
and casts unfamiliar, rounded shadows
that will march into my next twenty years,

so that one December, or a June--
the sun will be high then,
the shadows not as long or low--
I may again, at 74,
sit here in this corner,
the rounded, marching shadows
no longer unfamiliar
and ponder 40 years
of eternal slicing shadows.