At Eighty

At 80

You realize

You’re not immortal

Parents long buried

Friends fallen by the wayside

Like spring leaves from an aging tree

Arthritic Bones that creak and moan

Mile walks turned to blocks

The year’s race by like
A track sprinter

Bring me to my mother’s grave

Her tombstone chipped

The words fading

No such fate for me

I’ll go the way of the Indian
My flesh given to flames
No dirt No worms
No suffocating box

Ashes and bone my fate
Monterey or San Francisco Bay

The sunset my head stone

My poems my marker