This Is Getting Old

Mutters one corner
Of my muzzy brain
As I drag myself,
Aching, out of bed
To face the morning

And find I'm facing
A wall of crawling
Grasshoppers as well.
So they've invaded
The bedroom now. Great.

A couple of hours
Later, my karma
Is wrecked forever
By the massacre
Of a hundred bugs,

But I've decided
A few short lifetimes
As a bug myself
Can't be worse than
One covered in them.

By the time we leave
The house, the outer
Walls are on the march
And I head the car
Into the mountains.

We picnic below
Geyser Pass, above
Spanish Valley, where
Juniper-pinyon
Reassert themselves,

As do the lizards,
Bobbing their shoulders
At us in their shade,
But mercifully
It's grasshopper free.

Under a giant
Spiraled juniper,
We relax, we lean
And loaf at our ease,
Observing the breeze.

The high, dry country,
The warm late spring sun
The sweet company
Rhymes in memory
With a long, fond day

Some decades ago
Glowing down the years,
And it startles me
That moments, all brief,
Are no briefer now.