A Man Feels His Age
Dec 16 2007


A man feels his age
when old friends start passing away,
dropping-off, one-by-one
— sometimes a mercy,
sometimes far too sudden.
There is the old-man smell of hospital beds
and funerals in the dead of winter,
cutting graves into frozen soil.

He grows more and more detached from the world,
its desire, its self-importance;
remembering old jokes,
replaying penny-ante poker,
accompanied by disembodied voices.
Which is not madness or delusion
but a kind of truth
— that memory makes us immortal,
for the time being.

He no longer fears death,
and suspects he will only fight it meekly.
Because he’s grown weary of life
— the aching joints, the hard breathing —
and the isolation of a place where he feels like an alien;
this world where nothing really changes
but everything appears to,
and the less time left
the faster it seems to move.

He tries to contemplate oblivion,
and knows no friends await him.
But he hopes the conversation will continue
in another man’s head;
where voices somehow persist,
defying even death.