A rainy San Diego day kept me mostly inside. The photograph of candles and the poem have nothing to do with each other... except, when I think about it, the picture may be appropriate. A flickering candle is a feeble but effective metaphor for a single life. I can even let my mind go searching for a way to make a candle with a single wick mean one thing and a candle with two wicks mean something else. It's important not to waste even a rainy day.
A GOOD WOMAN I KNOW

When a person reaches ninety-two or four,
a right to crankiness, even meanness
might be considered earned,
the years and gravity having pulled and reformed
the original body of bones and flesh
all smooth and round and firm;
but a good woman I know hasn’t cashed in the chips
that buy the right to bitch and moan and cry
that life’s unfair and Nature’s cruel.

She walks erect, cloth coat pulled round
against the chill of early winter
and holds her head as high
as when she was eighteen.
She looks directly into my eyes when she speaks
about the things she will do tomorrow
and next week and next year
and never moans or suggests that this day
in her life is any less important
than those she had nine decades past.