At Sixty

By Sandra Tyler

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one plus one can equal blue—
not of crayoned sky, but of trawled
fin’s soft ray. The linen answer:
ironed and put away. Tilled questions
rest now in a sun bowl.

We are nothing if not layered,
not of lake-bottom silt
but of strata, sedimentary
rock mineral. Of particles settling
from water and air.

We understand why the cherry tree
crooks badly, are wizened to intaglio,
the etched too deeply.

No longer at the center, we rim
the rainbow’s oily spill.

Our losses, of lion-mother

love, of the husband broken

winged, of children now plovering their own

tides, we worry to the softened.

Our recompense is our inflorescence:
not of the potted blossom
but of the conifer’s umbo. That opening
of cone’s hard scales—to loosen

our seed wings.