Epigrams for Life after Forty

Between the doorbell
and the death knell
is the tax exemption certificate.
There are fewer capital letters than we supposed.
Other people’s stories will do.
Sticky nougatine green-and-pink stories. Other people’s stories.
Untenanting is more difficult than unbelonging.
The body? The same alignment
of flesh, bone, the scent of soap, yesterday’s headlines, a soupçon of opera.
But there are choices
other than cringing vassal state and walled medieval town.
And there is a language
of aftermath,
a language of ocean and fluttering sail, of fishing villages malabared
by palm, and dreams laced
with arrack and moonlight.
And it can even be enough.