I feel the calendar lies
Though I know
Its purpose
To record accurate time
Days and months
Footnoting special events
But it tells me
I am 72
Officially old
How I fight every day
Its certainty
That I should start
The process of crumble
Lending myself
More to the rocking chair
I will not demur
Taking the easy path
Conceding to frailty
And though
I know
I cannot win
The war is on
to the two young lovers
across the aisle from me
midway mainline between
Wakefield and Kings Cross,
her head nuzzle-snuggling
into the tats of his neck
in a warm violet honey-tangle
of solar wind-blown hair,
his arm carelessly drapes her
as he checks his online mail…
and hey,
it’s me, I’m the creepy old guy
watching in regret and envy,
it’s me who secretly leans
across the aisle to whisper
love her, and love her well,
for this moment never comes again…
in the mirror face to face
I see this young man old
laughing together with one another
“how absurd, you’re so old so young”
not like an ancient city
built layer atop of layer
but a continuous construct
of the new, the humorous
thew humane the divine
forever renewing refreshing
relentless time at our backs
Childhood in Poland.
Carefree and warm.
We flounder in the water like beavers
and although leeches pinch us in the calves
we build the dam.
The river is dreaming.
Reflecting as in a mirror
the familiar faces
of friends and loved ones,
they forgot me,
their children have grown up
and gone into the unknown.
The river is dreaming.
And I’m still standing on the footbridge.
I’m afraid to jump.
Cross the dam of time.
In the modern coffee houses
Once the employees hit 30
Their wristband goes from green to red
And they’re (metaphorically) dead
Off to some older hipster hangout
To sell cereal bars and sweetened milk
Under the watchful gaze
Of Charlton Heston in his final 7Os
Hip cool movie
More at http://www.dantindall.com.
Youngest of three
The center of her universe
While others fall like dead leaves
She never thinks about her own mortality
Supple skin smooth as velvet
She looks upward at a limitless sky
Years pass flesh loosens from bone
Muscles start to atrophy
No longer young
She looks down at the cold ground
As one by one by one
Are taken
The old barn moans and groans
as bones creak on this coolish day.
Stepping outside into fields of corn
I watch the winds conspire with
the grass to tickle the setting sun.
From a dark cloud drifting above,
a lone snowflake floats down and
stings the tip of my cold red nose.
I express a tinge of sadness as
my summer dream drifts away.
Twilight time chases the day away
near the dead crab apple trees on
the old farm where I once roamed.
In between the river
And the dim distant past
I spent my solitary childhood
In the quaint and murderous valleys
Of this gently wooded townland
Of a long forgotten sub-king
Whose sole remains are earthworks
And ancient brittle thorns
Where I hid from moonlit figures
Silent soldiers of all ages
In the cool sweet mist that rises
Through the rowans and whin bushes
And which sings softly of
Condolences that assure me I am
Dreaming and my mind will shortly
Flutter like the damselflies
That dodge and swerve from bats
And birds and broken swinging branches
That fall between the newly
Planted birches that were
Put there by my father
To rejuvenate this land
More at http://www.dantindall.com.
