[New-Poetry] from Garrison's The Writer's Almanac

[Anny Ballardini]

 Foreseeing

by Sharon Bryan<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,furl,dv,43n4,k7k5,3hrs,fxvj>

*Middle age* refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it *will* have,

but that it *does* have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it's simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won't go on
like this forever.

"Foreseeing" by Sharon Bryan, from *Flying Blind*. © Sarabande Books, 1996.
Reprinted with permission. (buy
now<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,furl,dv,f6uz,gf5,3hrs,fxvj>)



-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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