NaPM April 28 2013

[milo]

In just how many pink horizons
have you bathed the moon, Milo?
Surely it’s a few.

I’ll measure all your meters,
in hope to know your age:

You’re twenty-five, like Keats?
Or twenty-nine, like Shelly?

Or maybe that won’t work,
since I do not now write as well
as him, though I will soon be thirty (god willing).

So just how old are you?
And will you have three hundred plus more days
in which to wash the moon?

How old will you be then?

Oh well, keep mum; and have a good one, too!

anyone who even subtly compares me to Keats or Shelley gets on my favorite persons list.

---

When I was young I'd pull breath
deep within my chest
and hold it there until I felt
the pressure of waves
between my ears force my chest to burst
it back in one dizzy gasp
then grab another and another
until spots collapsed my sight.
As I am older now I've noticed
how the sun has gone spare
with its warmth and light -
slowly, as if to fool an old man
that the sun wouldn't cheat
and grow wan for a friend -
still there's plenty to halo the
sidewalk's new tenants,
to surround the young with
both burnish and bright.

It will grow worse as I'm exiled
to the flickering company
of unfaithful fluorescents -
peevishly sharing their glint
with only stainless gurneys or
countertops. Too sullen to cast
warmth on an unwilling master.

A day will come when I will grasp
futile, for just one more gasp -
and it will be as it was then, when
the air escaped my lungs like a captive -
just out of reach of its helpless tormentor.

---

How dull am I...I completly miss-read the daily prompt as "write a poem as if it is your B'day"
Anyway..here's my belated happy birthday wishes for you Milo. Hope it was a good one.

All the best AJ.

thank you, reading poetry is a great gift.