LVI

It's the sum
of the first six
triangular numbers,

some kind of
Stonehenge black magic,
being born in '56,
then turning it.

Somebody said,

"Watch your back,
both Abe and Adolf
were shot in the head
at fifty-six ―

both the good and bad
could be targeted."

My Alice was good,
leader of a certain world,
hers no less tragic,
dead at the same age.

But I should be okay ―

my name doesn't begin
with the pyramid A,

I'll avoid theaters,
packing,
and most of all,
politics.

~ Tess Kincaid

This year the lavish sun warmed me and the gentle wind fanned me and for just one afternoon banished the cold aches and stiffness that serve to remind me, like a blind slave standing behind me, that life is as fleeting as glory and that mine has more yesterdays than tomorrows.

But that is fitting, withal; we owe God and ourselves a death. The trick is in filling the time and space between our birth and that death with living.

I hope I have done that.

When I look back I have remorse but no regrets.

When I look forwards I have hope but no illusions.

If I can do anything to make it so I will leave my world better than I found it; from my works, from my words, in the lives of my children and those I have touched.

I have loved extraordinary women.

I have seen flares in the night over the Gulf of Fonseca, and held my living son in my hands still warm from his mother's womb.

I have drunk deeply of the kisses of dark passion, and watched the sun set behind the Sierra in blue and purple as rich as wine and peaceful as the descending night.

It has been a good half-century and six.