Tempus pro nemine manet*

It's the day there comes
a knock on the door
and you open it to find
a government agent
with a glowing, hot iron.

You drop your drawers
and OLD is eternally
branded on your ***.

It is painful, sad,
absurd and funny.

Sweet relief, too.

Never again must you
worry about getting old
or dying young.

You are old. It is official.

From now on there is
only older and older
until there isn't

and then the mystery.

Merrily, merrily,
merrily, merrily,
life and death,
but the same dream.

Hoka hey.*

Each day a death and a loss.
Old friends, old lovers, old heroes.
A brain that draws a blank.
Knees that hurt. A back that aches.
Tentative steps down the Ghost Road.
An age of slowly letting go.
A time of things falling away
like leaves from an autumn maple.
Where we all go, in our own time.
A track through twilight to darkness
and then, we hope, into the light.

Quis est iste puer?*

Not even the
sterile, serious
hospital scene
can diminish
the wonder.

Your wife
glows radioactive.

Something new
in this old world.

Love made flesh.

In her arms,
your child.

The Cosmos smiles.

Everything changes
forever.