Poem: “Birthday Present”

I am eighty today

How can I have lived so long

Such a complexity of work, people, events

And turn to the window

To catch in my dazzled eye

A scarlet tanager

In the cherry tree.

–

The last time I beheld 

That scarlet and black 

Sumptuous bird

Was when I moved into

This house by the sea

Twenty years ago.

He flew to the flowering

Andromeda.

–

I have travelled so far

Through time

To arrive at this moment

Awestruck.

– 

The complex forms of being

And a magic bird

Gathered up

Into one overwhelming

NOW!

–

Nothing else exists 

Ecstasy and peace

Are mine forever

On this birthday.                                  

–

“Birthday Present” from Coming into Eighty. Copyright © 1994 by May Sarton. Reprinted with permission of W.W. Norton & Company.