Glacier

The wind tells all the dream-lives:

in one, walking alone in a cactus garden.

Or there’s another: me, old, dying, in a wind-filled beach-house.

Polished hardwood floors, the kitchen full of relatives and friends

who have come to be with me at the end.

We sometimes find ourselves on the widow’s walk watching the water,

reminiscing about a life that hasn’t happened.

Cactus garden, you are a ruse.

Beach-house you are only an echo.

My seventy-third year is a glacier,

advancing across me in my sleep,

decanting my dream-lives,

sculpting new topography as it recedes . . .