being of wrinkly age myself.
It’s as if we were fellow immigrants
in the country of the young,
the fresh faced
and so often self-absorbed,
with their new enthusiasms
which they fancy
set the standards for all time.
No, give me a woman who knows
how fashions come and go
who’s earned her wrinkles
with toil and grief
with whom I can empathize,
and compare notes.
The young can’t know
what it’s like getting old.
What it’s like to grow up, yes.
Being grown-up has its attractions.
But being old
with its slowness and infirmities?
It merely excites impatience.
So for most of our lives the old are them.
Then one day they’re us
and we can’t understand
the inability of the young
to empathize.
Medicine Man
I’ve arrived at the age of medicines.
Every morning I arrange a bouquet
of varying sizes, shapes, colors, textures, transparencies.
You are what you eat, they say.
I picture a man made of pills and capsules
like a sculpture composed of found objects
by some Picasso of the medicine chest.
I remember seeing my grandparents,
and then my parents,
setting out their daily array of medications.
I didn’t give it much thought at the time
but now I know it defines the old,
and I’ve become one of them.
Most of my life it’s been “them”.
One doesn’t think of oneself
as destined to be old.
For that matter, one doesn’t quite believe it
when it happens.
I see the signs
but their significance escapes me.
My body may be old,
but not me.
The Physics of Aging
There was an obit in today’s Times
for somebody I worked with 35 years ago.
Yesterday he was 43.
Today he’s dead, at 78.
It reminds me of the movie Shangri-La
where a vital young woman,
or so she seems,
removed from her magic valley
suddenly ages, withers
and turns to dust.
So it is with real people,
their aging held in abeyance
while your attention is elsewhere,
until you cast your eyes on them
and they age decades in a moment.
There are also those old friends
you talk to on the phone
after being out of touch for years
who sound just as they did many years ago,
until you see them
and their voices crack.
As we’ve known since Lot and Orpheus
it can be dangerous to look back.
What’s a Century?
The receptionist asks my date of birth.
“March 23, 1931,” I say
and think how remote that must seem
to the young woman behind the desk
in this year of our lord 2006.
Somebody born a century earlier than me
would have arrived in the Jackson presidency,
the first not of a founding father or one’s son,
before the coming of the radio, the car, the airplane,
the great building of railroads,
the war that almost split our young nation in two.
At my age, that man born 100 years before me
would have found himself in a wondrously different world
from that into which he came,
the modern world for all its later change.
But here I stand before this young woman
a representative of an era three quarters of a century past
and she probably gives it no thought.
In her job, she meets septuagenarians every day.
Besides, the young are seldom interested
in their parents’ or grandparents’ times
until it’s too late.
This Old Bod
I’ve worn this body for eighty years.
It’s getting threadbare,
sags at the knees and elbows,
got wrinkles no iron can cure.
My cuffs have been shortened several times
and various parts let out.
Those pieces that used to fit
no longer do. I’d go to a custom tailor
if I could and order a new one,
no matter the price.
But I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.
I’ll wear this one to my funeral, I guess.
These Hands
These hands have been shuffling cards
for more than seventy years.
The motion’s still the same
but the skin is slacker,
hangs looser on the bones,
is spotted.
These hands have punched and pounded,
caressed and petted,
rubbed, tickled, scratched,
wiped bottoms, fastened diapers,
fed hungry mouths,
sliced, diced, peeled and poured,
made shadow animals
and here’s the church and here’s the steeple,
played instruments,
written and typed,
opened books, turned pages,
gripped, grabbed, cupped, pointed,
folded, gestured,
saluted, made obscene gestures,
pulled triggers, stanched wounds,
tied and untied, buttoned, zipped
unbuttoned, unzipped, unhooked.
These feet too have begun to shuffle, but only recently.
The hands, however, busily carry on, much as always,
though there are some things they no longer do.
What to Call Me
When I was a lad it was Gramma or Granny and Grampa.
Oh, Bubbe and Zayde for one old country pair,
great grandparents I hardly knew.
But now there’s Poppa and Grammy and Nana and Gaga
in my immediate family,
and when I googled “names for grandparents”
the first offering that came up was
“120 cute names for grandparents”
also presented as “adorable alternative names for grandma and grandpa.”
I don’t want to be adorable, thank you,
or even cute.
I got over those conditions 80 years ago.