I celebrated my birthday yesterday by relaxing at home with my family. As kids are wont to do, my son, Colin, blew out the candle on the cake, so we had to light it twice.

Colin Joe getting reading to blow out the candle.

I snuck in a couple of wishes, but mostly I felt enormous gratitude for still being here for another day and another year.

The night before I reflected on my recovery from surgery and my birthday, journaling for a few minutes while standing near my bedroom dresser. I am not a habitual journal writer, but I have notebooks scattered throughout the house to be available when the urge strikes me. Often my journal entries—which I always convert to a long-running Word document—contain mundane facts and banal thoughts with no potential to become raw material for a poem, story, or essay. However, sometimes the act of moving my pen on paper will lead me to a line that initiates energy.

And this is what I came up with the other night. It’s not a great poem, but I was happy I wrote it in a spontaneous burst and finished it in one draft.

On the Eve of My Fifty-Fourth Birthday

There has to be more
to this life than
just what we see.

Or else there isn’t—
in which case
death won’t be
so scary.

It’ll just be a
harmless place
devoid of life.

And you and I
can handle that, right?