Aging
It happens when you look in the mirror, or when you exert yourself with
more than the usual effort and don't get as far, as fast, as well
as you used to.
You are reminded your aging.
More than wrinkles, more than brown spots
on your skin or blood vessels coming to the surface
making a purple veined road map on your feet and other parts.
It happens when you realize you don't feel the same
way about certain things you used to deem so important.
Now they are quaint reminders—you're aging.
Some people begin to give up a little day by day.
Others focus harder to hold on.
Refusing to let go, refusing to submit to gravity.
Now is when all those caveats of the life ahead
come in handy.
I watched my father, so robust and capable, decline.
I was around him, living with him, near the end.
It taught me a lot. I was lucky to see with my own eyes
the process—of aging.
One day it will stop.
One day it will flash before us.
A life. Lived.
A time for everything.
Until there's no time left.
Dreams to do this and that.
Some became a reality and some stayed
the way they were: a nice fantasy.
We discovered so much and learned perhaps not enough.
But we were part of the experience.
We strutted about the stage.
We played out the plot of our life.
Now as we look in the mirror
we see—we're aging.
Sharing an understanding.
We who are aging.
Smiling a sardonic grin.
Knowing we're not as we used to be.
Knowing we are—aging.