<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><p class="MsoNormal"><font size="4">On reaching 95</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font size="4"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Will I ever learn, I ask, over and over.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Learn what you respond? as if there were an answer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Learn who I am, learn who we are, learn what there is<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">to learn. what is this life is we are born to live, if not to<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">learn what is. what is it that we love, to drown<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">in love is to learn to love, to fall, to fail, to fall <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">again and again. to fall in love, to love in falling<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">in love of another in love of one another, to fall<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">headlong we say into the moment of knowing<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">of being together to fall into the moment of knowing<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">we are ultimately alone, there is no other. we fall<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">over and over in love, in terror, in aloneness<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">we ask will we ever learn who we are who we<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">might have been who we might yet become when<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">we know that we are the other and we are the beginning<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">and ending of our love and yet, there is the aloneness of<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">being the self and not the other or of being the self and the other<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">and we learn this over and over.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">there was a tree. and the tree had one apple. and we learned<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">to love the tree and the apple and we knew there was no other<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">that we after all are the tree and the other. and when I write<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">will I ever learn, I know the answer is no, I will never learn, because<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I am always the other and yet still I ask will I ever learn.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- fran claggett-holland</span></p></div></body></html>