new sails

(a ten word challenge)

ah the impudicity of the young and heartless
already I can feel my unworn age creeping over me
like some witches curse, an exanthema of
gentle grief that pours in faster with
every adult night of wine and cheese
yet with the space and time I have spent here
I could barely compose a fulsome sonatina

how neatly berthed I find myself in
the overwhelming wharf of this new life
more raw and loosened and a truer self than ever
while I imagine my former friends and apologists
sipping lemonade and iced tea by the old pool
with manicured smiles and synthetic aplomb

I may sigh for their loss, and regret others
but, like any faithful diarist, I
nullipara, poet and funambulist
cannot record other than the facts
namely, that I still cannot help but quiver
with a fear and a hunger for all that awaits me
even under this intrusive zeitgeist