Sunset

Sunset, quiet, except

for happy birthday to neighbor's child, 

virgo, and all that means, purity

of morality, inability to scheme, 

whatever else the stars dictated.

Woodpecker climbs oak, Connecticut.

Not ten years ago this mountain was

completely forested, untouched

since early arrival of Europeans.

Now my parents' home and others stand

in new clearings. The birds

do not seem to mind. Sing, 

and deer occasionally visit, from where? 

Out of the pre-historic past.

That I must die

is my every third thought.

On my hands and knees, cold sweat, 

my own body murdering me.

I meet death with the philosophy

I lived in life. Acceptance

of the loneliness, the unregarding

beauty. There is that shoreline

along the straits to Puget Sound, 

in mist, the generations

of sea birds nesting on the water.