Alan Fox

CELEBRATION

When I was a kid
I sent off for trinkets—
a secret code ring,
a crystal radio—
I would mail a quarter
expecting treasure
as early as the following day.

The center of my life
has always been connected
by a thread of joyful expectation
from this day to the next?
today is good, tomorrow will be better …

until now that I’m 64, remembering
ten thousand coalescing futures?
days when I leaped out of bed
and my teeth never hurt.
and my world …

my world is narrowing.
I follow the same furrows
day after tedious day,
energy dissipating,
my excitement evaporating
into the seamless sky.

—from Rattle #21, Summer 2004