Portrait at 60*

Smoothed stone, round
hard knob of a bunion. Feet
encased in their own slippers
of flesh. The faded star of a mole 
high up on my thigh, a smaller one 
adrift at the outer corner of my left 
eye. Once, a fortune teller counted 
lines on the edge of my palm 
to call forth daughters. Once, 
I doubled over in the shower 
to mourn the one who didn’t stay. 
Those that folded their wings
when they came into this world 
make their own constellations now;
they still remember me. Early
mornings and late nights, 
I practice rolling the gathered 
weight in my belly into an orb—  
the hardest lesson: letting it down 
to rest in knee-deep grass. 


 
* In March I'd sent this in to a call for "poems about age"
but it didn't make the cut...