Birthday Poem (now we are 66 and still love to walk along the beach)

Speak now in full froth

As we crest and come ashore

Before laying to rest where

We shall sleep forevermore 

So the waves whispered to me

This morning while I sipped

From my morning coffee 

Down by the beach

More and more nature's eloquence  

Seems to be wasted on me

Garbled on awakening 

With all her best words 

Evading my reach 

One is what one makes

Such is every poet's fate

No matter how the sheaves 

Happen to accumulate

Year after year 

Words cascade 

Along the mind's shoreline

And at best leave behind  

Little more consequent than

This sea-wrack of shells and pebbles

Strewn raggedly 

Across the high strand 

Monuments to impermanence 

Designed not to stand 

But to fall one and all

Life Perennial

What I love most about

Gardening is that every year

One gets a little more proficient

And likewise willing to undertake

A little more work

Last year the Joe Pie weed

And milkweed took root

Increasing this spring’s bounty

That’s what it means 

To live and think perennially

To suppress and encourage

As needed yet remain

Open to happy accident

To be constantly raising 

The flower bed stakes

And vegetables too

The Iris

Before it opens

The iris is flat
And pointy as a stiletto

But when it opens

Oh my god

Suddenly it falls

Extremely agape

Almost shameless

The way it drapes

Itself - which is typical

Blue flower deportment

In point of fact from

Upward striving

In first position

To utter collapse