Marjorie A. Buettner...

Bethlehem

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 sloughing 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 shown 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

WHCHaibun 2007-11-26