Turning Fifty

Having known war and peace and loss and finding, I drink my coffee and wait for the sun to rise, With kitchen swept, cat fed, the day will quiet, I taste my fifty years here in the cup. Outside the green birds come for bread and water. Their wings wait for the sun to show their colours. I'll show my colours too. Though we've polluted even this air I breathe And spoiled green earth; though, granted life or death, death's what we're chosing, and though these years we live scar flesh and mind, still, as the sun comes up bearing my birthday, having met time and love I raise my cup - dark, bitter, neutral, clean, sober as the morning - to all I've seen and known - to this new sun.