The days roll by, filled with the detritus
of lectures to bright or numb faces,
with making soup and eating it, swing dancing,
scrubbing the apartment, moving on to the next lover.
You have worked hard six days a week,
sent snapshots of the kids to your mother, marched
in Washington with 25 Quakers against the war
and with a hundred thousand women for the right to choose.
You forget students’ names, though not their poems
or papers. The day after the last day of class, you lose
purpose on the trip from one room to another.

The years walk down a path of light.
Sea turtles struggle up the sand to lay thousands of eggs
a whisper above the high tide line.  Let us cheer
the baby turtles on late night television
scrambling as fast as their stubby legs can carry them
toward the distant surf, pursued by snapping beaks.
Only a few make it but those few might be immortal.