As One Ages

My soul, as I age,
slows its staccato licks
of chirps,
and in the hard
underbelly of the city,
I pick my way through
its rough-hewn neurons
stretched over
a hundred yards of
villanelles’ and sonnets’
landscapes.

There, I will sink into
this self-fed idea
of home,
sending the angels back
while my troubled mind
lays virtues
in its shuttered box.