Pushcart Nominees
BIRTHDAY IN OCTOBER
If I sit in my chair, journeying motionless toward the ragged shore
of this age I thought I’d never reach—the number
that belonged once to my mother,
and the ones
who came before, I can see dimly
into the dogwood outside this southern window,
its leaves now, as on every birthday, bleeding softly into fall.
We’re ready, they tell me: just moving through our time. You, too,
they say. You too. Do it gracefully, with dignity, so quietly
the passerby will hardly know
you’ve gone
Nicola Waldron
Columbia, South Carolina