Alive is

my first breath

announcing the credibility of men.

One contented sigh

replaced by a

singularly anguished cry

as the curtain fell.

My first tentative kiss

wet with toothless

innocence

Alive is

my dance, raw and ripe with scars

My pointe shoes seem to large . . .

As I cringe in the wind with the sun on my back

it invites me

to bathe within its magnetic resonance.

The cold clear crystalline spring

at once warms my heart and

numbs

my broken fingers

Alive is

my struggles and my pain

The wisdom I have lost and sometimes

gained

Within each withering

. . . and blossoming

the sum transcends her parts.

Awareness bringing richly laden truth and light,

luminosity,

immersed in twilight.

Alive is

my grey-haired wrinkled mirror,

peculiar with transitions and timeworn passageways

for denizens like me, myself and I.

The debts I've paid away

by loves, suspended past along the way.

content once more, am I, to reminisce

over residual remains

that

obscure the mere veil strung across

the infinite expanse of space

held up by a company of stars