The Patience of the Sun

INTRO:
There is a particular kind of longing that lives in the body after the body has begun to argue back. This poem sits with that longing — the morning sun still beckoning, the spirit still willing, and somewhere between the two, the quiet negotiation of what remains. It is not a poem of defeat. It is a poem of patience.

By Vincent R. Pozon

The sun winks me awake through the wrinkle
and bend of the venetian blinds
dusting off sleep, stumbling out of bed
I pray they will let me go out to play

they no longer smile when they shake
their heads ‘you are not well enough, no’
So I argue as if reason mattered
haggle with a hardly disguised glower

"we are never well enough anymore
the lungs are past the age of just able
the spryness is imagined, we are
never one hundred percent anymore"

the slice of sunlight on the wall has inched
but there is no hurrying, the day
accepts whatever play is left
in my back and loins and competences

we are never one hundred percent
now and anymore though the legs
may disagree at first and incaution
can be cause of scrapes and scolding.