1
          Almost sixty:

from now on
          even begonias are amazing.

     2
           As in a dream

in which a light flashes
          and one has no choice
but to follow it,
          I ran after
the lightning bug
          along the railroad tracks
the night before my sixtieth birthday,
          a little drunk, unafraid,
laughing my fucking head off.

     3
          Only in dreams now

does my mother tell me
          to remember my sweater
on these cool summer evenings.

     4
          Walking past my two favorite pines,

still dripping from the rain,
          I point them out to you,
and you smile,
          and I am still sixty.

     5
          Cottonwoods in wind:

shakiness
          is the only way.