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.