Pondering Old Age
When I am old, with scallop jaw, and chin slack,
With blotched hands like shores from which tides
Have ebbed; bowed bones, blenched and shrunk;
Hair, once alive with copper shafts in sunlight,
Now white…
Shroud for a brain begging death;
Will there be a spark for tomorrow in my eyes?
Or the embers of remembered yesterdays
Grey, like cinders in an empty grate.
Hope hanging in the cortex, quartered and drawn Stillborn…
Is the bleakness in old eyes
Because arid lids are taut and bald?
Eyelashes are shades when emotions flicker in
Eyedepths. On deeply private matters lids are
Shutters…
Is that why old age seems so often
Sleeping? I hope my aged mouth will wear
A wreath reminiscent of smiles set there,
Not a grim scimitar of bitterness and regret,
As I wait .....
© Lynne Harris
