When I was young

I loved the poetry of youth

The way the tourists love the vivid shrimp

That children sell along the road to Buzzards Bay.

I wanted heat

And hard shadows before noon,

Thunder at dusk, and night lizards running

Across the ceiling like aimless electricity.

When I was young

I hated the poetry of age

And had no time for cool abstractions

That seemed to finger life through thick woolen mittens.

But now I'm old

And I wait for the hazy rime

Of snow around the moon that comes

When the storm breaks and the world's reborn, fresh and new.

And I take comfort

In the blush of ice algae

pulsing through the icy eons without me

Because it's the pattern -- not the parts -- that persists.

Bruce Brown
Sumas, WA
August 2003