Looking Forward to My Sixties
Some say there is no reason constellations wheel
across the sky, there is only space and time and smallness.
But smallness can contain galaxies of meaning.
One person spends their life searching for answers while another
stares out at the pond. Herons and frogs mostly worry
about each other. What to eat. How not to be eaten.
The frog sings through summer darkness while the heron
stands long hours in the light. Patience is a virtue
woven on the loom of a long life. Youth is too restless
to master the details of thread over thread to the end.
David, when he grew tired of bullying, picked up a stone
that had lain in the desert for a thousand years.
How strange to find that whatever we need was provided
before our birth. A shorter road ahead brings a life into focus.
I kneel in the garden, watching ants march in a line,
less uniform than you might think. Their tiny feet
shuffle past each other. Some with empty mandibles,
some carrying ten times their own weight.
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. He runs poetry workshops for Connect and Heal, a local nonprofit. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Cagibi, The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, Ponder Review and elsewhere. His first collection, A Summons on the Wind (2023) is available from Kelsay Books or on Amazon.com. Web: alfredfournier.com. X: @AlfredFournier4.
Amethyst Review 
The poet has reminded us that all we need was provided before our birth. He has provided us with all we need in a poem as we age.
Claire Massey, commenting on Alfred Fournier’s “Looking Forward to My Sixties”, published March 30.
LikeLike