At the smack end,
Right before the resignation,
            Before the national shame:
Suckling, utterly dependent.
 

Just then came thirty-eight,
            Rebuilding us,
Claiming reconciliation.
            Nursing and still a toddler:
Bright-eyed, boisterously upright.

            Polyestered,
Pleading naïveté, malaise.
            Training-wheeled and water-winged:
Commanding youth-infused mettle.

            Contagiously
Optimistic: unabated
            Words and dreams and pride and words:
Growing strong in adolescence.
 

Forty-one: points from light,
            Warring, winning
Against cold, victory in right.
            Ideals: justice in action:
Making heroes, making meaning.

            Navigating
Nuance, irony: “is” isn’t,
            Staging bully charisma:
Building metaphors from biceps.

Stubbornly forty-three,
            To adulthood,
Behind the veneers of success,
            No longer just my:  our best:
Breaking rules and hearts, party lines.
 

And here I am:
Thirty-nine at forty-four,
Steeped in hope and caution,
            Watching the world spin
            Around me–us–
            Catching my breath,
            Holding fast,
Counting back and ahead,
Wondering when comes
            Convergence:
            Forties–forty-five, perhaps–
                        Fifties?  Likely not.
            Or if all the chances here have past:
 

            Toward our rebirth
Or is it fancy renaissance,
            Or a different beginning?
Or are such histories the only
 
            Future there is left?
            At this precipice–
                        At thirty-nine:
                        Now, still, again.
                       

            Darting and blue:
                       Vigorous.

Weak-necked and heavy-headed,
            “Stop mourning!” her pride choked,
            Gasping for breath:
                        Combative.

            By tubes and tests, prayers and will,
            Pillow-propped up:
                        Bionic.
 
Bruised and scabbed, body failing,
            Limbs puffy and empretzeled,
            Her wits in waves:
                        Acerbic.

            To others, winged and unseen
            To us, again:
                        Accepting.

Unimagined will,
Inerrant beauty, then
                        Transforming.
 
Sallow, sunken cheeks arose,
Enduring scars of age retreated,
Cracked alabaster creases ‘came porcelain,
Drooped lips entersed,
Placqued teeth bared,
Nostrils filled,
Body wholed,

            A wife’s smile,
            A mother’s smile,
            A child’s smile.
 
The sun of life emerged, burst forth,
            The perfect, room-blinding smile,
            Hydrangea-like:
                        Blooming still

Nine, Five, Four

Nine wise, black-robed, sequestered scions
Homogeneous,
With one voice: Law.

Speaking with brave equivocation
For this now’s people
with forebears’ words:

Compromising, a tenuous whole,
Split along old faults,
Bridging others.

Jurisprudentially bound by rule:
Accounting to God,
Accounting Man.

Channeling precedent, common claims
On humanity
With consequence.

Bravely banishing uncertainty
With uncertainty,
With spliced nuance.

Six men, three women, four liberals,
Six Roman Catholics,
A Latino,

Georgian, African-American,
Two Californians,
Four New Yorkers,

Italian-Americans, three Jews
Four conservatives,
More summed than whole.

Holding a polished, law-honed mirror,
Reflecting itself,
One court, one Land,

One live, heart-beating Constitution,
One deciding vote,
Straddling dissent.

Balancing justice and humans’ rights,
Truth and tradition:
Science and faith.

Proclaiming:  Here, no more may “same-sex
Married couples have
Their lives burdened

By reason of government decree
in visible and
public ways.” No!

“Majority goes off course,” and yet
“Federalism,”
Firm-rooted, bides.

Conjuring Blackstone and Solomon,
Burke, Locke, Marshalls both,
Unruly mob:

Admitting, tacitly the failures,
Imperfections in
Decisions past.

Nine patriots, Americans all,
Five: equality
Four: yesterday.