On the Eve of a Hard Seventy
       

I woke with the vision of turning blue,
not some septic faded holey denim,
the kind I wore as a teen and lived long
enough to watch the style disappear
then return recently to racks of clothes
in quality stores with senseless price tags

nor the pale sky-blue of a bright summer
day, just the way it was on the late August
date when I turned seventy, a blue
that shouted light-hearted joy completely foreign
to the actual event

which started out with an email
from my old high school buddy Mary, the one
who moved to Mexico when she married
and four decades later we reconnected
via cyberspace and she wished me
a memorable 70th birthday and that the coming
year brings you only success and joy

and then confided that her beloved cancerwracked
spouse had finally succumbed early
Saturday morning and added a long missive
detailing the scene, how they had foregone
a religious service as he wanted, but had turned
out to have one anyway, the family—all dressed
in Yucatan beige and white (guayaberas) gathering
around him, sharing memories and tears and more,
and how they had left the coffin open so everyone
could say a Last good bye, except for one grandson
who just couldn't bear the idea of seeing his "Abu"
gone, no it wasn't that kind of sky-blue at all

but rather, it was a cobalt blue I was turning, my skin
just suddenly becoming that startling, rich, unignorable
blue that so often crams the pages of today's most
sophisticated decorator magazines, skin so
shocking that it stuck out, demanding attention,
not denial, and after that it didn't bother
me to be turning seventy since this new
brilliant blue somehow made me beautiful.

cynosure

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Copyright © 2018 Sarah Voss All rights reserved
from Possum, Beaver, Lion: Variants
FinishingLine Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission