Alive

What is appropriate to say about the changes

in your life. That at 23 I was confused

about a girl, under the sculpted pines.

Quietly, my friends and I contemplate death.

A subject, until recently, unknown

to us in such a variety of forms. Nuclear flash

to exploding blood vessel in the brain, control

eludes us. Heirs to a society adept with numbers, 

we run in the park and eat whole grains, 

increasing survival odds.

The city and the mountain are two hard anvils

against which our hot lives are shaped. Love

is the fire, and the need for love. To be shaped

by the lover's warm hands, like clay.

Alive, almost sure of it.