Jen Rouse

On a Middle-Aged Birthday

The worlds begin
to thin now.
So much that I
am not disturbed
when I spill into
a life I left
long ago. I buy
cheap coffee
for home, sweep
runaway granules
into a Folger’s tin.
My grand-
mother’s fingers
hover, at the edge
of shadow. I am hawk
and heron, loon song
on a ripple of sunset.

When one is young
and a poet, they say:
write what you know.
But not about who
you are. These later days
will spare you
the mundane, say,
of what you had
for breakfast, as you skim
past a pile of scrambled
eggs, plunge beak
into plumage, to break
open the stars.

Jen Rouse (Twitter: @jrouse) directs the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cornell College. Her work has appeared in Pidgeonholes, Pithead Chapel, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. Her new book, A Trickle of Bloom Becomes You, is out now with Headmistress Press. Find her on Twitter or filling coconut tart shells with lemon curd–her favorite sweet!–in the middle of her Iowa kitchen, most likely with two wheaten terriers under foot and a teenage daughter playing guitar nearby.