Expectations

He quietly named the friends he was losing
at 76 and I
recall how parents, surprised,
felt this lonely prick
of their self-same mortality
with tearful eyes


alone -
The Last Leaf-
A rite of passage, this
realizing that you have outlasted your peers.


When half my friends died of AIDS
at half the expected age of death
I felt that prick.
young and energetic
I wailed, "this is wrong, this passage"
I've outlived my peers
and yet have years and years before I leave

Expectations shattered
waves of tingled silence.
hollow shivering pain
accompany the rushing realization
that the world is not as it is
or was
or should be.

Somehow I believed
my understanding
would go the distance with me.

Lost in time's continuum
in newly real vision
understanding revised
I stood shocked
The Last Leaf
at 35

*****************
with homage to Oliver Wendell Holmes' The Last Leaf