"Oh, Harry!  Harry is that you?"
The old lady calls to the young man passing by.

"I have looked for you everywhere, but could not find you.  
Why are they keeping me here, Harry?"

And when he pats her hand and bids her goodbye,
his heart is breaking;

For he wishes with all his being to have had her same recognition.

I know plenty of elderly,
I should,
Who seem to know
Everything about Nothing,
And have the time
To tell us.
If we're not wise in youth,
We're not necessarily wise
In age.
Experience needs tempering
With a modicum of brains,
Which may explain
The Wisdom Fallacy.

a home of unrest survives in my old town where
madness seeps through jaundice colored halls,
lapping life from rotted brains.

grim photos of grandchildren
deform walls,
but old folks don’t remember.
they wear nametags.
who am i? residents wail
for mommy, their ’86 kitten,
a bus pass from chicago or
the wrong god.

her eyes are sallow.
tunnel vision, they say.
cloudy hues without purpose.
bags under gramma’s lids hang
          like dead gangsters
and bifocals settle around her neck,
in case she gains a pang
              of clarity.

Lovely Rita,
once a fat cook is now slender as a fang.
she forgets to eat.

my guttural granny, she stutters
incoherent, mostly.
but today, she babbles
        an omen.

watch o u t
      thing s are
    g o nn a
h h h appen
  
she retreats,
deteriorating.

At the end of all this,
When your spines bent
And when I have arthritis,

When our wrinkled and spotted fingers reach out for each other,

When we still kiss eachother goodnight every single night,

When our grandchildren grab at our faces and question the meaning of life,

When we are wrapped up in eachother on our bed just as we did sixty years before,

We will look back,

And our old pale cheeks with blush with color,

And our blurry tired eyes will brighten,

And we will have the most vivid memory of how it happened,

And our time-worn old souls will be woven into a perfect pattern,

Just as the universe had woven our lives.
(i. r.)

Grandma Clarice,
or Chub as I prefer to call her,
is tough as nails.

All 90 pounds of her on her
not-even-five-feet-tall-frame,
she always told the funniest jokes,
and her laugh was one of
those laughs
that just
              reverberated so warm against your
                       eardrums,
contagious like the
common cold,
you couldn't help but catch it.

Chub always made the best pies,
any kind your gluttonous mind could
imagine:
cherry, blueberry, apple, peach, lemon chiffon, anything creamed;
don't get me wrong,
my mama inherited the gene,
her peach pie my absolute favorite
in the summertime,
but still,
mama learned from the master, and Chub was
the master indeed.

Chub was witty,
she was poised,
she was so many things that I
don't even feel like I ever really have figured out
what all she was, she is.
But I can't deny the
memories I have of Chub
smiling
as I played Christmas tunes on the piano,
looking collected and cool as she
whipped up another perfect meal,
her voice inquisitive as she
asked me about school,
the teacher in her proud yet astute.

Chub can't remember anymore,
but I remember for her,
the laughter, the
impeccable odors wafting from her all-white kitchen,
the late night games of Rummikub,
that tough-as-nails Chub who will always
exist in my
memories.

He reaches out
Old hands
Worn down by treks of knowledge
Across the body of earth

He gazes out
Open eyes
Made bright by staring upon
Beauty far and wide

He speaks out
Soft voice
Made gentle by telling stories
Of wondrous adventure