Old
Old: What then?
Nothing you envisioned.
When you still see nothing’s happened.
Brain and head, the genus strain of breed
Inside precisioned:
Supremely known to God alone.
Mirrored image says to one,
Stifled by all kinds of blarney,
“This is me!”
While scolding image old keeps screeching,
“This is really you, you creature!”
Stretching like the rainbow’s arch,
Gold out of reach, perennially out of touch,
More a cockroach than a torch.
The young cannot conceive of it.
You believe, for you perceive it.
Doctors twenty-eight, or so,
Policemen new, firemen too,
Lawyer and aristocrat…updated.
All are babies.
Old is known – and hardly that –
By those who daily flat out own it.
Even when you’ve got it, are it,
Even then, what is it?
Old will ever be a ‘What!’.
Old 10.5.2015/re-composed 1.31.2021 Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Poetry 