Aging Gracefully
Feb 16 2008

(You may want to read this preamble after you’ve read the poem.

…This isn’t the kind of poem I usually write: way too romantic, for one! So who knows what I was channelling this time. You might think the proximity of Valentine’s Day has something to do with it; but in my opinion that’s pure coincidence. More likely, the inspiration comes from a film I left in the middle last night, and will return to tonight: “Away From Her”. Based on an Alice Munro short story, this film dares to depict old people making love – actual physical skin-to-skin love and lust. Which makes you realize what forbidden territory this is; at least in books and movies. We avert our eyes from old decrepit bodies. We prefer to imagine the old as asexual. We tolerate such absurd clichés as the “dirty old man”, instead of celebrating life-long sexuality. We positively cringe at the image of our elderly parents in such physical intimacy. OK, OK …’nuff said! Anyway, that’s the point of this poem: so please don’t accuse me of knee-jerk romanticism; and it’s not as if I’m about to embark on a new career writing Hallmark cards!! /B)


Old people grow thick in the middle
under shapeless clothes.
Their hands are skin and bones,
mottled, stiff.
They wear thick socks in soft-soled shoes, no laces.
And when they dance, it’s close;
touching,
leaning against one another,
shuffling ahead in small deliberate steps.
Hard of hearing
they move to their own inner music,
oblivious to the tune
to other couples
to a room full of people decades younger,
who wish they wouldn’t cling so close.

Why do old people
making love
make us so uncomfortable?
We idealize their unwavering devotion,
yet cringe at the thought of their aged bodies
naked.
At old men
who lust unashamedly,
and old women
who succumb to the most basic urge.

When I grow old
will I make love with the lights off,
under cover?
Or will I look in wonder
and see her as the beautiful girl she once was?
To grow old so gracefully
I don’t even notice
— my love blind,
my lover untouched by time.