181 Aging poems

She slumps in the disabled bay clutching a waffle-cotton gown around a spreading paunch, shambling breasts. Why not say ‘I’? For that’s who sits at 6 a.m. waiting for the health club pool to open in the rain. A grown woman, after all, supposed to know her whereabouts. Today’s my mother’s birthday, a 1907 Aquarian of the self- denying kind, ‘never say “I”’ her motto. She had me nailed for years. Her voice drowns out the radio’s chattering static. Now I’m the same age she was, dying, observing noble savagery: a gathering knot of skinny women, tight black butts in leotards, regulation sneakers, Brazil-waxed calves, gripping i-pods, mobiles, water bottles. The men stand back, silent, sullen, balding, bored and out of it. Health stalkers, renouncers of smoke and flame, deniers of brimstone. One hell of a century: between the holocaust and the atom bomb who are these people? Between the deep and shallow end, never say thank you or good morning. Avoid eye contact. Signals may be misinterpreted. Slow Lane, Fast Lane, Walking Lane Only’s where I’m at. The moving parts count laps: twenty five’s a half-hour’s worth. I sing myself a rumba to keep rhythm; the Speedo wall clock ticks a strict 4/4 defeats my ruse while dove’s feet skitter arrow-wise across the perspex roof. No Diving Running Eating Smiling Share if lanes are busy. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The waiting crowd are all, like me, up early talking or silent, more vivacious than galahs, more foolish than parrots. We stand and wait, walk up and down in the rain talking or not, holding in sagging muscle, spreading paunch, talking about things that must matter. So much seems to hang on getting in that door.

If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without wealth I would be without health now and how can I live to be old? If I must worry about how I will live in my old age without love I would be without dreams now and how can I go on living another day? Allow me to sit in the sun and listen to the sky. I will love you gently. Allow me to stay in my room and weave my rainbows. I will love you truly. Like a colt in the meadow with no boundary allow me to wander around till I hear the autumn stealthily strolling by my door. I will be waiting to be with you then.

A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning, It must have ended somewhere. Stuffed horned owl Pompous Yellow eyed; Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig Sooted with dust. Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy’s letters And the line of love They must have ended somewhere. Yesterday’s Tribune is gone Along with youth And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach The year of the big storm When the hotel burned down At Seney, Michigan.

I'm used to the emperor's bitterness I can't find the sweet place unless you make me This face that is not my face I may look made but when you touch me you make me Make the oak say blossom The stripped say swell The avenue pavement say river Make me This shirt I can't take off The one the nights without you gathered to make me The new day The sweet place Tomorrow whispering from tonight's last light Make me Kissing you without authorization If you want me to stop you'll have to make me The ruined city Or is it a woman interrupting your sleep to say Now To say Make me

I am older in my faith now less certain about some things more certain about the important ones the important ones: i am loved i am not alone this is not all there is

My dad retired on a friday and on saturday didn't know what to do he learned woodworking he made things for people he was good at it he was happy i think about that a lot

i expected to feel old i don't feel old i feel like me inside this old thing the body does its thing i do mine we coexist not always happily

I know now that time is the thing not money or ambition or being right just time and i knew it when my kids were small but i was busy knowing it instead of using it

Counting up not down i don't count down to anything each number is something i made it to and i'd like credit for that

What young people don't know is that you still feel twenty-six inside while the outside does what it does strange business being in here while out there changes