Sunny jaunts, now-and-again treats, with cousins, siblings; and parents along but somehow invisible.

While countries, armies and ideologies battle, bees make honey. Butterflies float, and drink the nectar from gently open flowers.

The limpa from Scandinavia. The ciabatta, and the michetta from Italia, also known as Rosetta. The mantou from China.

It’s an early Spring morning of bellsong and birdsong, sunsong

Remember that one day you, too, will die. Will cease being here, in body, in breath. Will join all those

At precisely 9.25. When the moon, the first and most abundant one of the new year,

If he could see you now. Really see you. Take you entirely in. As you are now, in these days, places

Burnished at first, then blemished— an earthly foreshadowing. Then bearded for a while.

Good to mark it each year on the world’s calendar. But I celebrate it every day.

What we belong to. What we can point to out there; around us. And what a singular gift. Our innate sentience.

Circa ‘50s Wichita. Your mother, Gladys, going for her blue rinse,

It was a wet signature. Full of emotion. Full of eroticism. Still wet, with sweat

How deeply are you living, friend? How sense-deep. How heart, and

When the Moon moves between our Sun, Earth and up-raised eyes, through the long-held breath of our wisdom-keepers,

The tender new leaves of the trees, emergently green. The white feathers of the wading egret.