Crisp, gnarled finger peaks through a gap in the trees: lit on by the sunlight;                                                                 That dapples on the pure green leaves; and the golden sunflowers: and the spiked roses;
Nettled in a face like poison ivy, or netted weeds: yanked from the brown earth:
That reflect the wisdom of its seeds, a hundred years old;
But all is silent, and still:
And the crack of a branch, the turn of a red fern;
Is a banner for a late birthday, burned with the anger of a hundred years:
With the dirt of a century of green living in a sunset-lit mist,
Where I stalk, a face like a catered-in moon: one hundred years old:
I read in the trees, in the passing sea: that glints pink, with a flash of white:
Like the tip of a whale; or the teeth like foghorns, of an elephant: or the feathered wing of an eagle; black-and-white as it tones into the sky: as it creates a v-shaped trail of blue and clouds.
I dreamed I was one hundred years old, and the stars did not dapple onto my acorn-aged hair:
The trees did not breeze my name; in the suddenness of the woods:
The forest did not metamorphose into a mixed bowl of seeds and nuts:
My face did not fall in the rises of the sun,
But I was old;
No longer tough as the rain that had fallen:
Onto my youthful, pear-tinged cheeks;
No longer in love: as the epithet had stained my name:
No longer thrown roses: from amidst a shadowed cave:
No longer in the meadows: that bloomed roses and melody: from the gentleness of trees:
But in a darker, different part:
With my eyes lined with the rage of my time:
The white-blue snapped open:
And I had dreamed I was a hundred years old.