decades the dawdler, small d dilettante,
big a amateur, good at half a dozen useful/tasteful things,
and an even-tempered brooder, to boot!
upon attaining seventy years, the chore is to unpack
cabinets and closets – to riffle through decades
of notebooks, like a miner following a hunch.
the gift of seventy is humility enough to invoke alchemy,
which may hie the compression of my leaves beyond
the ink black stage straight to the sharp and shiny.
Dave Read