Other very short poems of a similar sort are 'A Siren Calling in the Night,' written in December 1980 and posted here on 12 December 2012; 'July Days,' written July 1980, posted here on 14 July 2012, and 'Who Can Interpret a Broken Branch,' written in March 1980 and posted here on 6 February 2013.
Turning 74 later this year, and beginning to feel the aches and woes of age, I marvel at the likes of Thomas Hardy who made it to 88, and even more remarkably Thomas Hobbes who made it to 91 back in the seventeenth century: both of them without any serious aid from medical science. I'm not aware I've written anything on Hardy but here's a link to 'Thomas Hobbes' written in June 1980 and posted on 9 August 2012.------------
I feel it deeply and it hurts to say
That the hard-nosed Bible must have its way:
At seventy we pass a border,
And after that all’s out of order.
Cling on to eighty if your body can,
Pretending you’re whole as when you first began:
But then the Gate Man crooks a finger,
And none may any longer linger.
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© January 2020
