Getting Ready

///getting ready

getting ready

I’ve had time to think,
right on the brink,
of the end of life.
I’ve become reaquainted
with the girl I was,
the one who stared at
a sulphur sky just before the
hurricane of 1938 filled
our town with thrashing trees
throwing branches down and
snapping electric wires which
writhed about and sparked by
the side of the road.

I left the library that day
with three or four books
at 4 o’clock and stared at
the chrome yellow sky, as I
stood on the cement sidewalk
next to a Longfellow-style
New England white house,
mysterious behind a high hedge.

I was the oldest child,
born on a 13th
wanted to be 3rd or 7th,
born on any other day,
so I would be lucky.
I met a 7th child half a century
later and he wasn’t any luckier
than I, except that he got to fight
in THE WAR while I collected
newspapers for the girl scouts,
because of Hitler,
though I no longer remember why.

I walked solemnly along the aqueduct
that day so I could stare at the weird
yellow sky.

I remembered that girl the other day
when my friend who was a 7th child,
drove by. I loved to walk, I’ve realized,
and did, when I could.