These notes,
like open coffins, remind
us too well that we trade
youth for history.

Habit persuades the old hand
to work, or move, from
the reticence of stone or revive
a sun beneath our twilight skins.

And yet,

I am the god of my procrastination:
though my love dries up, dry
as twigs that catch children’s kites;

though cut, once, from the same
cosquelle fabric, the design
I forget.

Or, I have not been trying.