How can I create beauty
when my stomach is so fat?
A seated body and the folded leg wrinkles
yes splotches, marks, bumps; worried
about importance and beauty in art and cultivation
with swollen ankles and fusing toes;
any form of youthful muscle given over to aging
and indolence, eating over, a shuffle or waddle on flat
feet and groan to ligament and bone;
in the mind is an aim for quality, for freshness, fecundity
is the target and the idea, pondering through the house
late in evening, when I glance in the mirror, one quick,
and its notions fancy and high striving, all of it,
come for this moment dissolved.