The leaves rippling
like wide-bellied sails
on a blustery shore,
the hedge thick with birds,
and the black, velvety
crickets chirping in
the cradle of the dark
tell us we are the same
age. We are burglars
arrested on the same night,
hands slipping into
a fortuitous handshake,
cars beaming past
a tumbledown shack
where a frenetic farmer
drives his tractor
upon the lip of dusk.
We are a few sparks
rubbed together in
the universe by giant
palms, poured into
the same cup of each
brief, waking moment,
falling in and out of the same
happenstance with hands
outstretched, and so vastly
outnumbered by the dead
that we might as well
celebrate it on the same day.