Birthday Poem

Re-Birthday Poem

Snow is turning everything
in sight completely white except
the river running through it all.
Profoundly gray, for all intents
and purposes let’s call it black,
it lends a certain point of reference
to the day. For otherwise
the world is being covered with
an unremitting thought that’s not
that different from the constant noise
I hear within my head. It’s like
I should have done the opposite
of what I did and now the question
is irrelevant, although
I wish I could—just do it all
again—and if I could, I’d make
the perfectly appropriate
response, I think. But underneath
that chatter is the river, void
of anything but emptiness
itself, alive with energy
from mountains upstream, and the sea
downriver, storm surge currently
impelling all the world to me.

~Greg Perry 12/13/2007