Sitting Outside A Day In May  
      
I find myself not only wondering [but]
Thirsting, needing to know when and how they died, [but]
Thoughts or suffering or not: in short,
The state before and during…

I observe a skin that’s wrinkling,
Drying out and shrinking,
Hear and spy a bird in tree,
See the freshness, spring’s new growth,
The only thing I really see is death, a passing.

I allow myself my breaths,
The moods, desires -
All that goes along,
Forgetting for the most part.

Deep down I see the buds of parting
And an emptiness because
I have no answers.
All that I can do is wait and act and meditate
As if life equaled all time-in-the-world.

Every year in spring
I find I’m writing,
Charting age unconsciously,
Literally marking time.

Not sad, not glad but emptier
Than years before,
(or maybe more).
Noticing, acknowledging a substance;
The substantial underlying all the grandeur.

Sitting Outside A Day In May 5.21.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin