At My Age

it seems the beginning
of the age of hazy memories,
but the places of unattached things,
the vastness of my unknowing,
neither no longer held in check,
have begun their unraveling.
Clarity is rearranging itself.

If we could recover our first language,
the one we had at birth,
what would we remember about first light?
What questions did we ask?
That language
let go when we started speaking.
It’s still somewhere
in the convolutions of our brains.

There were voices that began
speaking to me
before my birth, telling me that
whatever is, isn’t;
whatever isn’t, is.
I still take that to mean
that I am not of this place.
Of what place I am is where I am not.

But no matter the time or place,
or the clatter of planting, building, and untangling,
I’ll continue my stumbling ways,
entering reluctantly another ramshackle,
bewildering place.