One Old Woman’s Wisdom

I sat outside on my balcony, 

overlooking the flat white roof

of the laundry room and ramada by the pool.

Beneath me my neighbors gathered and gabbled,

and gabbled and drank in their Happy Hour. 

I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me,

but there was one woman of eighty-odd summers,

who slid up and down the loud, happy scale

of her own bubbling, cackling laughter,

as she must have done in her twenties and thirties.

I was reading Cohen’s Book of Longing,

and that was a laugh as often as hers,

but you knew in the end, Life wasn’t that funny,

not for him, then, nor for us, now, nor her,

but a sorry mess that had to end,

as she must have known too,

but she liked happy endings.