We need a
Richter scale
for major personal
events that
rattle our core,
shake our life,
leave fissures
in our psyche.
Sometimes we
can put books
back on our
mental shelves,
replace broken
windows, rebuild
fallen walls.
But sometimes
the mind is
left all out of
joint forever.
I think I played
the cards I was dealt
as well as I could,
but at times
it was tempting
to go for misere
When I am gone
no mirror will
ever reflect
my face again.
Old people
have one hundred
words for
not feeling well.
Ambition burned
white hot when
I was young, then
I lost it, discouraged,
then found it again,
then lost it,
then found it,
now, in old age,
thinking myself
safe, the old fraud
seems to have
appeared again.
In old age
anecdotes from
the past come
flooding into
my brain, elbowing
each other aside,
each one eager
for attention
Some of my
friends die young,
all of my
enemies live to
a well-rewarded,
ripe old age,
it seems.
How can I
remember
perfectly the
words of a
Lonnie Donegan
song from
1958
when I have
forgotten so much?
Biographies
give me the
comforting
feeling that life
is arranged in
patterns, has
structure, can be
understood
rationally, and
will turn out
all right
in the end.
Can’t decide
if the pleasure
of finding that
someone older
than you is
still alive
outweighs the
finding that
someone younger
than you is
now dead.
