Mission Hill Morning

Five AM, I wake to screams—

the neighbor's house bursting from within.

The fire reaching upwards and out,

as orange flames do at such an hour

against fresh eyes.

The sky, billowing black above,

that darkness of smoke rushing towards

the morning light.

Meanwhile, my eyes meet down left of the scene.

Downtown, a gold building that the sun can't resist,

is ablaze too,

the top half of the high rise flaring yellow.

The two structures conversing in light,

one true in its burning.

The city, begging to meet the day.

Written by Alexandra Ustach

The Very Old by Ted Kooser

The very old are forever
hurting themselves,

burning their fingers
on skillets, falling

loosely as trees
and breaking their hips

with muffled explosions of bone.
Down the block

they are wheeled in
out of our sight

for years at a time.
To make conversation,

the neighbors ask
if they are still alive.

Then, early one morning,
through our kitchen windows

we see them again,
first one and then another,

out in their gardens
on crutches and canes,

perennial,
checking their gauges for rain.

Madea's Wisdom

"Some people come into your life for a lifetime, some come for a season; you got to know which is which. And you're gonna always mess up when you mix those seasonal people up with lifetime expectations."

an excerpt from Pat Conroy's Beach Music

"But it was her figure that drew men to her, those surprising curves that make words like 'voluptuous' explode on the tongue with the sweetness of tropical fruit. I have always suspected that my father married the shape of a woman and had not a clue about the nature of that woman herself."