suggests two alternatives. You must decide
if the phoenix eats its old ashes or gives packets
of dust in silk pouches to adoring witnesses
 
who sprinkle it as hope, chances to get it right
this time around. You are allowed to list ways
of failure (10 worst) and highlights (10 best) 
 
based on how they looked, felt to the fingers, smelled –
with exquisite detail for the ball slamming to the goal,
the dawn the friend died leaving a letter to be mailed. 
 
Or, reach back to flame-glow on a thoughtful face
at the fireplace, the going inside for less of dark  
with a sip of something claret-red in an etched glass,
 
and make your own ashes, one heave of a vast
stash of to-do reminders, bills, poems, and letters
that went unanswered or said enough for then. 
 
This is not a beginning, not even close,
except perhaps for babies. This is the going-on
turn – maybe lusty, partly lastly, inevitably likely.
                        

I keep many words in a sort
of clear plastic segmented box 
the elderly use to remember 
their pills morning, noon 
and night. 
 
One division is for swallowing
dawn’s light an hour before 
fresh coffee. Too early to tease
out how survival now
is called resilience. How love
can be tough. These are pink. 
 
The noon niche piles up
acceptances of differences, 
how my metta practice
works to accept difficult people:
for me that red-haired woman
who believes fervently her god
is a little old man with white hair
and tries to force me to believe
in Jesus. May she escape
suffering. May she be healthy.  
May we practice kindness. 
 
Then comes the sunset square
for heart words 
that keep my blood flowing,
life-saver anti-coagulants. 
Call these purple ovals love
or the salvation of solitude. 
I know a man who calls them
his children, his bike, 
but first his wife. Perhaps
home. Or sanctuary.  
 
I stash the bitter pills
in a gray ceramic cup
a child pinched together. 
These: candy-coated 
in sour orange 
that turns your tongue 
against itself. For words
like cash cow, supremacy,
self-sufficiency,
collateral revenge 
and denials that the worst
did happen and more will
soon enough. 
 
Some are beads that spill
and scatter on rock floors,
rosaries of habit,
sayings strung together.  
May you find peace. 
May the interlacing of my fingers 
be sign language for hope. 
 
May the last swallow
from the cubicle of night  
be at-ease no matter
how the dark springs 
nightmares out of the box
or rolls them under the rug. 
May we accept endings.