now my mother at fifty sighs
at the dinner table
says
when we were children this
is what we call old
and i thought it nostalgia
speaking
before the sight of my father
lenseless in the low light
of that diner
like a fist to the chest
greying man growing heavy eyelids
folding up into something like grandpa's

               he says
               he is not afraid of dying because
               when the time comes his flesh will
               fall apart
               and in this gilded chrome future of ours
               the spirit stays pumping cooling fluid through rubber veins
               and this brain of his
               will keep spinning away

when did he stop growing up and start growing old?