" I was not looking for a cage
       In which to mope in my old age." --- W H Auden

Turning sixty-five is not without its pleasures,
though the parameters of youth are rendered void.
You discover illusions are become a virtual reality,
a chimera you never outlived whose core is unmalleable.

So, one finds solace in their granddaughter,
who is unshackled by your paradoxes,
who presupposes only links to the obtainable.
And yet, she loves her "silly grandpa".

Old age is unexpected and doubt arises in the doctrine of wisdom,
a daily glass of prune juice becoming regiment.
Yet, granddaughters can connect the dots,
and, just maybe, afford us that second chance.

Reconnoitering each day from Zuccotti Park toward Wall Street,
they are the ensemble of the jobless, the homeless, the leaderless.
Twisted Brothers singing, "We're Not Gon'na Take It Anymore!",
the Nameless faces of democracy overcoming inertial rest,
demanding that equity of fortune be restored and the unjust be tried,
the living corpus of defiant non-cake eaters,
as naturally disordered as blowing leaves or drifting sands.

From lofts above the privileged sip flutes of champagne and jeer,
mocking the throngs beneath like Roman overlords,
while a daily pall of silence entombs Washington,
as if the watchman of the world has gone on holiday.

Do not shirk in your efforts, Brothers of the Street,
your numbers grow each day nurtured by your poverty.
You have subsumed the high ground and conscience of our nation.

Brethren skulking from the daylight shadows,
we watched other guys **** up to chicks,
offering to trade their Beatles bubble gum cards;
lying about how much they dug "Love Me Do".
***** Stones fans, we snickered every time
the sycophants lauded Ringo over Pete Best;
stared in disbelief at enraptured female fainting
on Ed Sullivan's really-big Sunday show.

Displaying our leathers, we were anything but Fab;
Brian Epstein would have deemed us scrofulous,
a given that nobody's daughter would marry us.
Back then, chicks were rated by putting-out,
not how many texts backed up on their cell phone.
No one really gave a thought to "the British Invasion",
nor if our lot in life would "Not Fade Away".

We have become a nation of Tennessee fainting goats,
muscles freezing in the panic of social discord,
poised on the cusp of dread, eyeing a mass grave.

In the end no one really dies, the only dilemma being unpardonable
poverty, needless hunger and children born with drug addiction,
pawns in a chess game of life lacking raison d'etre.

And shall I live my span leaving no mark upon history?
What occlusion obstructs human decency in this land of riches,
barricades the impassable gulf, as if echoing a distant waterfall?

I have walked this sidewalk to where it ends and seen the destitute.
How the poet in me shudders and like the fainting goat,
collapses in the sadness of our mutual story, our personal holocaust!

Two souls once stood against the night,
upon a mountain in a distant valley.
And there in anguished shrieks on loud,
screamed most primitive betrothal vows.

Now many winds have swept the mountain's face
and time has run its endless jagged course,
while the souls like frightened deer have run
to where the frozen brook of fear was sprung.

The great stag drank and was refreshed,
though heart and soul were nearly drown.
The white doe running on to catch a dream,
fearing turbid waters of the foreboding stream.

I cannot save the beauty of a snowflake,
for the warmth of my love will melt it.
And severed will those souls remain,
divorced by nature for its wanton selfish gain.

With snow capped peak bending like a finger,
Gilboa Mountain beckons me to come.
Yet, I fear my hopeless mind must be depraved,
for it offers me a home, I'd sooner call a grave.

In the harbor of my sixty five years,
The tide is going out beneath the dock.
Ragged barnacles **** up my piers;
Gulls circle my bald pate in a flock.

There was much in her madness to draw us in.
Poetry was payback, electroshock for readers,
collusion between self and the culture oppressing women.
Rebelling against the limitations of a woman's sphere,
seeking refuge in career, a feminist before it was chic,
writing poems as a poultice against death
lurking in the shadows of a conflicted mind.

Sylvia, what was the dialogue you had with Death?
He deceived you in the mirror,
made you tremble at the foot of the stairs,
hissed from the potatoes in the kitchen,
till you sought solace in the oven's jets.
You were an artist out of time.
It's safe to come in from the depression now.