The Perspective of Time

If I could go back in time
and speak to my teenage self,
I thought last night,
I would say to her
When you are 70,
You will say happiness is
lying half asleep at 5:00 a.m.
listening to soft, gentle
snoring on your left,
listening to a woodthrush in the distant woods
and hearing the early songs of wrens
and cardinals and towhees through four open windows
on your right,
with a yellow cat curled up at your feet.

Helen Etters

3/4/17

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Tears in Palm Beach

In  West Palm Beach, the morning is warm.

Too warm, some say.

I walk around the lake and fall painfully in love with the Muscovy ducks.

Four Muscovies  rest  under a bottle brush tree.

In the shallows of the shore, a red-faced Muscovy swims with seven black chicks trimmed in yellow

and one yellow chick trimmed in black.

An egret stands apparently on the water.

But with my cynical nature I suspect there is a rock just under the surface.

Or a stump.  A stump would do.

The chicks scamper around their mother on the shore

while someone’s grandchild tosses pinches of white bread into the water.

There are tears.  There are tears.

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