My Day

I rise in my seventy-sixth year to meet my day,

A centime in the vast treasury of days

Allotted to me by the one or ones,

Faces hidden, hands unseen,

Who allot days. 

I have spent my earlier days,

Some well, filled with flowers and birds and leaves and stones—

All aglitter with beauty and life.

Some badly, investments choked by various vices raging

All bursting with ugly guilt and love of self.

Now I enter anew the marketplace of this civic frame.

May the markets be stocked with flowers, birds, leaves and stones—

All aglitter with beauty and life.

--January 5, 2013