[youth is precisely] | Ipswich

Notebooks: June 29th, 2020 | June 28th, 2023

A lot happening in the world this week but no time to write it – so two poems from my old notebooks, one from June 29th, 2020 and one from June 28th, 2023:

---

youth is precisely

that moment of your

life “having an opening”



it is not that you can

make a decision that

keeps that liberatory

feeling alive for your



whole life but precisely

that the possibilities are still open

in youth and later are not



which is sad and “signals

regret” but is really

the formal structure of

life itself



to love accept and even be grateful

for aging as a precondition of the 

joy and possibility you earlier

felt is the secret

that gets more and more difficult to apprehend



as you are pulled into its sinkhole

eating light as you slip

---

IPSWICH

These bending new england
Towns built into the landscape

That preceded them. I’ve not been
Diving in the tides

Of my hometown
After dark

Lately. Salt marsh,
Beach rose,

Buoy and hold.
I’m on my computer

A lot lately. Writing you
On my phone.

Interiority like
An estuary, not quite

Disappearing.