A.D. Winans: EARLY BIRTHDAY POEM

sitting here fifteen days
before my seventy-eight birthday
I drink my morning coffee in solitude

wear the early chill of morning
like a quilt of  stitched memories
my mind a nosy intruder
plots the course of my life

the eye can not see
the naked universe
nor caress the fertile stars

the moon a graveyard
shines its eyes down on me

surely that is not me
I see in the mirror

the months the years
revolving doors

like the trick mirrors
at the fun house
at Play land at the Beach

friends fewer in number
wait for me in my dreams

like ducks in a blind

left with a cup of morning coffee
a spoon that stirs memories
of  young women

the pleasure of warm flesh
on fresh linen sheets
hot as an iron pressed
to a a singed garment
turned to  bones that rattle
in the graveyard of my  dreams

the conversations that lasted
into the early morning hours
turned to idle chatter
with ghost's from the past