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Marjorie Buettner

The Second Coming

They say the body changes every seven years—cells change, rearrange, then die. Last night when I couldn't sleep, I felt those cells shrivel up and fall from me like meteor showers on a moonless night.  It was hard to catch my breath feeling like Yeats’s beast slouching off to a new Bethlehem—my body converging into something else, into something strange.  Finally, fitfully, I fell asleep and dreamed of her giving me a precious stone which shone like a marbleized pearl—a moonlike surface cool and smooth to touch.  Then, suddenly, I lost it—this precious stone which was entrusted to me disappeared—the life-stone lost for good.

full moon behind clouds
longing once again to take
this life for granted