[26] "Volta: A Birthday Poem"

Volta: A Birthday Poem

By Deidre Price

Because you must turn twenty-nine today,

and I must keep three years' paces ahead,

I note our separateness in foot and head,

yet hand and deed both keep us on our way.

If on this friendly path comes a delay,

a toe starts up a tumble where you're led,

lean fast toward me and fall my way instead,

for I am built to brace falls night and day.

If time should dim our paths like it dims stars,

should we find forks and wander as friends do,

Though chasms, rifts, eclipses always are,

good roads erode because time washes through,

you must know I am here, and here's not far

when I hold half the rope thrown out to you.

"Volta" means time in Italian. Within the context of the Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, which this poem is, volta also means "turn," which must occur at the ninth line (L9) of the stanza. 

This poem is for Ali Bloxson, a lover of all things Italian and collaborator for This Open Line, on her twenty-ninth.