Café de Zwart, Amsterdam, May the 11th, 2010, 16 lines

Primavera, Edge of Summer

Of his rugged good looks, senility and death
compete to pry away the final pieces.
He is finding life less precious these last days.

He’s become, he thinks, a contemplative species,
a sapien now it so little matters.
The tatters of his reputations count
less stridently each shrunken afternoon.

His latest prides and prejudices dismount,
and he, unhorsed and fearful of the sword
that he brandished for three decades and once used,
takes solace in the autumn sun that frightens
his face this spring, and he is sore amused
at the quandaries life presents him, such as death.

He shivers in the arctic breeze that splays
the sunlight into shards of frigid glory.
He is finding life more precious these first days.