I tell everyone how
I share a birthday
with the Reverand Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Though we commemorate it
on a moving Monday.
I celebrate both.
I claim the whole month.
Country songs ask us
to live like we are dying.
Which we all are.
Our birthdays point out
someone changed their lives
rapidly, seismically, for ours.
My father-in-law loves to say
his birth marks an anniversary
of Mother Teresa’s, though it’s really
her baptism date, another kind of birth.
Now we have twins
starting their 3rd year
on their 2nd birthday,
the last day in February
on a non leap-year.
After the wildest two
years of our lives:
birth,
pandemic,
election,
marches,
and otherwise.
Common Poem 