64
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The Poem
64
I pulled over once to look at the sky.Not because I planned to.Because the sky required it —teal and orangeand the red of mountainsthat were standing here before the marriage,before the thirty years,before the life that became this road,this night,this car pointed at the gap between two mountainsat the edge of everything that comes next.
The road behind me is wider than the road ahead.I noted this without judgment.This is what sixty-four looks like from the inside.
Thirty years.I am grateful for every one.The years were real.The love was real.The letting go was real.
I am also pulled over in the desert at nightlooking at a sky showing me my life in pieces —and I cannot tell if what I feel is lossor freedomor the thing that exists in the space between themthat has no namebecause you only feel it onceand by the time you could name ityou have already driven through it.
I chose this car for this road on this nightbecause some choices are not choices —they are recognitions.
You in the car
Sixty-four. The car. The year. The age. The road.All the same number.All the same question:what now?
The desert does not answer.The desert holds the road and the mountainsand the specific orange-teal dark of a night that contains everything —and waits for you to start driving again.
The sky is very large.You are very small.The road ahead is narrower than the road behindand goes somewhere you have not been.
The light at the horizonis either the end of the dayor the beginning of the next one.From here you cannot tell which.You drive toward it anyway.
The light at the horizon
This is called sixty-four.This is called the rest of your lifebeginning in the gap between two mountainsin the desert that holds everything without judgment —
the road going forward,
and you in the car,
going with it.