Sunset Poem by Robert Ronnow

Sunset, quiet, except
for happy birthday to neighbor's child,
virgo, and all that means, purity
of morality, inability to scheme,
whatever else the stars dictated.

Woodpecker climbs oak, Connecticut.
Not ten years ago this mountain was
completely forested, untouched
since early arrival of Europeans.
Now my parents' home and others stand
in new clearings. The birds
do not seem to mind. Sing,
and deer occasionally visit, from where?
Out of the pre-historic past.

That I must die
is my every third thought.
On my hands and knees, cold sweat,
my own body murdering me.
I meet death with the philosophy
I lived in life. Acceptance
of the loneliness, the unregarding
beauty. There is that shoreline
along the straits to Puget Sound,
in mist, the generations
of sea birds nesting on the water.