Subscribing, I have recently annexed
a catalog of resources to use
to slow decrepitude. Without pretext
I’m exercising ligaments and thews
before another effort, till I’m flexed
by gentle pose and stretch. I don’t abuse
the corpus like I did so many years.
This resolution’s working, it appears.
(Ottava Rima)
I’ve heard there’s nothing like the human voice –
no instrument can equal our full range.
But power comes with room to make a choice
about your tone of speech. Let’s not estrange
the sound of conversation from rejoice
and warm to cold belligerence. Exchange
that tune of bitter, discontent, or rue
for courtesy, and I’ll attempt it, too.
(Ottava Rima)
Compression is the symptom as I age –
a tendency in body and in mind.
There’s condensation in the way I gauge
surroundings, and the spacing in my spine.
I’m shrinking daily, sleeping shorter, kind
of like a turtle in my skin and neck.
Combating this, I stretch and fresh-opine.
I won’t surrender meekly to the wreck.
(Huitain)
Returning after 20 years away
from where she started life and spent much time,
the differences she notices dismay,
but most the views are charming – urban grime
and old graffiti, weather off the bay,
drug deals half-mistakable as crime,
lights and bikes and ambience so loud,
she grinning shakes her head. She’s feeling proud.
(Ottava Rima)
I ride the bus with students frequently,
and here’s an observation lately made.
They’re college kids, who quite compliantly
behave like every rule must be obeyed.
They seem to read the caution that’s displayed –
Stay seated till we do not move at all –
as if at age 18, they’re each afraid
of what would be at worst a minor fall.
(Huitain)
The mom is doting with the neonates,
but once a baby’s aged to six months old,
the woman opens up abrupt floodgates –
impatience pouring over uncontrolled.
There isn’t space then for a child’s hurt,
unless the injury needs stitch or gauze.
Her offspring grow accustomed to her blurt,
ignoring her, avoiding giving cause.
Her first-born tried for years, at first confused,
exasperated by the age of five,
but words were worthless. Mom was not amused,
and so the child managed to survive
another dozen years at home (and whole),
by learning to shellac her gentle soul.
It’s not too late to make a new beginning,
although the year commenced a month ago,
and dawn is past, and I am old, I know.
I have no goals for trophies – I’m for winning
a little better health: a way to slow
the march to dark; a gently lengthened glow.
They may be the effect of stuttered sleep.
Deleting cannabis could be a cause.
But I am dreaming nightly, and I keep
the memory of many scenes. I pause
in rise to consciousness, from nothing deep –
I surface from a shallow pool. No claws
or specters threaten – the vignettes are brief
and ordinary, absent fear or grief.
(Ottava Rima)
It’s mostly not an age-related ill.
She’s ancient but her memory’s not shot.
Her hatred’s from no side-effect or pill.
It’s mostly not.
If you remember vigor, you forgot
she tapped it from a fountain of ill-will.
She never laughed. She didn’t hug a lot.
And when we dared show feelings, she would fill
the space with her complaint or judgment’s rot.
You want to state the cause is age’s spill.
It’s mostly not.
(Roundel)
When he was 1, his interest in the world
so notable, his gaze reminded me
to see the trees and flowers that unfurled
before our eyes, the sights so gorgeously
available, resplendent, magically
arrayed. Too soon a screen kidnapped his mind.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away by three.
He may spend several decades nature-blind.
(Huitain)
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