Arlene Corwin Poetry

                      Ageing

Ageing is the strangest damned phenomenon.

It’s sneaky, going ‘long

With universe’s basic law of change.

We hate it cause we cannot change the change

With choice, with voice in matters

Dealing with each atom looming over time.

You watch a documentary of a famous person you once loved.

What you see is change or interchange.

Voice now gravely, hairs now straggly,

Mind not gaga (maybe),

But the teeth, fat, skin itself deranged.

It’s all so strange.

Invisible the first half century,

(If you’ve been so lucky)

Then they come: the boom of bombs begun in womb.

The stealthy hum of failing health a-zooming in,

The forms of  everything you took for granted

Changed from light to odium

Enchanted idioms of youth now faint or quaint.

And the damnedest twist of all

Besides what’s going on outside,

Visible and tactile, 

Is that life has lied.

You thought it stretched ahead forever,

That it never stopped

And then you’re bopped on your old head:

You’re dead.

One’s left to speculate and ponder

Where does life go on from here?

Where and if…

Ageing 9.11.2018 Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’m often asked by readers whose native language is not English.  Here are a few words of which they might like to know the meaning:

odium;  general or widespread hatred or disgust incurred by someone as a result of their actions:

tactile;  of or connected with the sense of touch: vocal and visual signals 

bop;  verb (bops, bopping, bopped) [with object] hit or punch quickly: Rex bopped him on the head