Cottonwood

I wrote a poem this afternoon on the train. It has nothing to do with the train itself, but looking out the window, about to nod off, I was watching the cotton from the cottonwoods fly past the train. (There are a lot of cottonwoods along the tracks.)

I am not sure what the poem is about. Maybe getting old. I like poems that hold some mystery, even to me.

The poem has a form I used all last year for my Journal. The date is inscribed in its structure. Just count the words: 3 stanzas, 18, 5, 30.

A blizzard of cottonwoods
beside the creek.
We drift, you, drift--
Where?
What has drawn us here?

The white of my beard.

The aged skin on the back
of my hands.
What have I labored to do
in the sun's shift--
the cottonseed's drift
across half remembered roads.
Where did you go?