To the always young…
Ageing
Ageing is the strangest damned phenomenon.
It’s sneaky, going along
With universe’s basic laws of change.
We hate it cause we cannot change the change
With choice, no 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.
One cringes at the strangeness.
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 this 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 9.11.2018/12.5.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Ageing; 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
Arlene Corwin Poetry 