Today is my 48th birthday; and though I keep thinking that someday I'm sure to succumb to the melancholy of growing old, for now I still wake up on my birthday morning feeling just as happy as I did when I was turning 6. I opened my eyes on this Sunday morning to the warm body of my husband curled against me and the comfort of knowing that, for the first time since August, both of my boys were asleep downstairs in their beds. From my pillow I watched the red and gold leaves sift slowly down from the maple tree outside my window. And I thought, Well, here I am again. This sturdy body has trundled through another year; my heart relentlessly taps out its teletype messages; my brain keeps pondering and my patient ears keep hearing; and later today I will laugh and cry and watch a black dog careen over the green and unkempt grass.

Here are a few lines from Gregory Corso's "Writ on the Eve of My 32nd Birthday," a fine and foolish poem that brings tears to my eyes every time I read it, even though he drives me crazy by randomly leaving out the articles before his nouns and I have no idea what "it might not make day" means:

The clue, perhaps, is in my unabashed declaration:
“I’m good example there’s such a thing as called soul.”
I love poetry because it makes me love and presents me life.
And of all the fires that die in me,
there’s one burns like the sun;
it might not make day my personal life, my association with people,
or my behavior toward society,
but it does tell me my soul has a shadow.