The Young See Age as Old-Fashioned — National Poetry Month

The Young See Age as Old-Fashioned

Somewhere, say, between a moral failure
And an avoidable foible. If the old fools
Just took the trouble to go to the gym... When you're hale
You're hearty enough to fear, far-off
The little puff: the black silencer
Screwed to the barrel of the future,
Short or long as that may prove. The furtive
Earwig of the unconventional cell,
Slick of lymph leaking out, in answer,
Or, nicer, surely, the shy embolism
Ambling through those precincts of familiarity,
The old elm-lined neighborhoods of the cerebrum,
Or—much better!—battering the chest like the old D-train
Taking its tunnel: whump.
All this is just imagining the actuarial worst.
Not age, which often comes first.

by Richard Kenney
courtesy Poetry Daily