Birthdays

Next birthday I am thirty-six, & formed (for all intents & purposes) in tooth & claw. Six books have peeled away all that I am & all that I am not; I turn back pages now in history's dog-eared book, & write of other lives. & here you come, pink as dawn, rosy as the aurora borealis blooming over Yorkshire & the ruined abbeys of the Lake District, curly as a baby sheep, hungry as a little billy goat, cuddly as a lap dog, able to flex your spine to fit inside my own, & born between piss & shit. I welcome you with all my breath & guts; I hallelujah to your eyes, your heart, your tender toes. May I keep growing younger with your years until, when you are just my age, or more, I have gone back to zero & am ready, perhaps then, to be reborn.