These things come and go
she said, pausing as a pair of
frantic gray squirrels raced over her
pale yellow green gray bark.

When you’ve lived your first
hundred years you begin to understand
that warning the neighbors and feeding
them sunlight and sugar if

things get dire is really the only
way to go on with things. It really comes down
to whether you love enough to love
through distance and dying and fear

and all that comes with a living
breathing life lived among living
breathing lives inhaling and exhaling
to the same solar rhythm.