The past is future

I am ninety-five with a deep commitment to survive.

But when I go I want all to know

It’s for another show.

The years and tears have not brought me to naught

But to a rise where I see what is behind and with equal clarity the skies beyond the rise

This is not a prescient ploy

But the harvest of a fortunate past

Of vast imagination and inclination to wrap the past around the unknown.

Where the sun shone

And I was never totally alone.

Those who declaim this refrain

Could sup from the same cup lifted high towards the magnificent sky

where the future does didoes on the head of a pin

where we don’t start over again

but build on all that we knew and have forgotten, too.