Download a PDF version of this text for printing.

On Turning Forty

By Berndt Clavier

To be forty is my heartfelt pleasure

erring, erect and tearing apart the still

small voices of Sunday morning seminars

love-calls in the kitchen, trifles rich and creamy.

And the mounting

sense of something slouching

like a posture or two

as time crawls insect-like to raise

its members in solemn judgment

of all things left behind.

My beetle brow knows this before

my hand recognizes the corneous sound

of membrane-wings flapping against

crisp bodies. All my mornings should be like this

spent and wasted by attentions leading nowhere.

 Download a PDF version of this text for printing.