Friends in their Forties

for Tom

Shafts of Indian summer
warm your face,
my neck.

You speak
of your mother,
ever the parent,
even until the very end,
showing all of you
how to pass
with grace.

As we hugged good-bye,
I said with my truest breath,
we have only thirty years.

Only thirty years
to work out
some similar feat.

We should start
figuring out now
how to die.

I meant it.

I mean it still.
And I mean, too,
that maybe
we have
only until
tomorrow.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston