Tag: Aging

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Distraction

Last weekend an old friend of my age
plunked his pill jar down on the brunch table
and proclaimed, astutely, that without
medical science he wouldn’t be there
to enjoy the free-range egg omelet
and crisped smoked bacon I served him.

Last night, thanks to Netflix, I took in two
noirs which I would never have been able, let
alone be allowed to see in the ringworm-ridden
movie houses of my boyhood. Planes, then,
had propellers. They flew just above the clouds.
Girls got pregnant. Boys fought with their fathers.

None of this makes any difference now — neither
last night nor this morning. No one uses cash or
thinks of change for phones. Things that mattered
then stayed off-stage. I need to remember to dim
the digital clock and make sure I haven’t
inadvertently set it for some wrong hour.

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Paraphernalia

What is not ephemera?
Cherished mementos,
like whispers in camera,
are no more momentous

than an old man’s whims
— no value to others
if their luster dims.
So let connoisseurs

mull tediously by piece
through what we remainder
in bulk or recycle in peace.
The account of their labour

will tally the same
as our own best
treasury of kitsch. No blame
if blest is curst, curst blest:

judgment will falter,
passions flare and pall,
fashions alter.
What holds us in thrall

is the mindless cachet
we confer to what’re
just chimera anyway:
votives for prayer,

idols cast into pixels,
facsimiles which flicker
then slip, like this poem,
into oblivion.

***

I have been trying to review and organize my collection of guitar sheet music, a revealing task. Sometimes they bear, usually in the right upper hand corner, pencil notations of their price, a figure not just inflation but their inevitable fate put wildly out of whack with their value.  These frayed and increasingly brittle parchment-like leafs will be recycled, if all goes well, in a bin for cellulose refuse.