Retirement

Slowly evening falls --
The heat of the day lingers
Into the darkness

The barest lunar sliver
Doesn't even cast shadows

Stone cold earth, rock hard,
With a dusting of thin frost
Sparkling in the headlights

They exchange diamond rings,
"And with these rings I thee wed . . ."

Contrapuntal threads
Of the Baroque orchestra --
Patterns in the air

Planets spin around the sun
The river of the cosmos

The coffeemaker
Automatically turns on
Before he wakes up

As the morning gets colder
And as the nights get longer

She tends to remain,
Even after waking up,
In her spacious bed

Holding on to a brief dream
That steadily slips away

After forty years
Retirement has arrived,
Now he has some time

To contemplate the plum trees
When they blossom in the snow