Where to Begin

I've been warned it's time to start packing
time to begin sifting through all my
accumulations
the years full of memories I've been saving
thinking they are pieces of my life
I can't abandon
perhaps afraid to let them go
in case the day comes when I can't remember.

I guess we've lived in one place for too long
never had to do this before
but soon it will be forty years full
of our lives in this house
let alone the years before, that tagged along.
I don't know where to begin,
but Reality keeps knocking on my door
and it's time to let her in.

When I was young, I thought about my death
too often . . . such fear of my annihilation!
Now that I have aged and ripened
watching my own body, my beauty
slip slowly through the keyhole
into the room of my acceptance,
I am no longer afraid
since there is less and less to lose.

Enough said about the inevitable!
I am still alive and full of spirit and I must
get on with this task of sifting out, giving away
making my circumference smaller
consolidating those belongings I need only
to survive and keep a happy disposition
while I wait with my Darling
for that golden coin to flip and settle . . .
who'll be sailing first to Never Never Land!

Joanne Cucinello © 2011

A Very Wet Tryst

Beneath
the withered oaken tree
she stands
tendrils dripping
warm September rain.
The tryst
all but comical now
and he
approaching with his
makeshift thatch umbrella.

The scene unfolding . . .
he in leather soaked,
she in soggy denim,
a novel Romeo and Juliet
dappled in sooty charcoal
remnants of their wet and weepy
campfire gone awry
and bed of nosegays
now ~
a spongy pallet.

But love not lost to folly
yet revived by laughter
will prove, alas, to set
the tone for future
merry jaunts!

Joanne Cucinello 2007

( This was written in answer to a challenge
at Musemongers Motel, where certain words
had to be incorporated into your poem. )