Doorways

 

Days of sweat burning your insides

making you pray they would cease

the endless ache in bones you can’t prevent,

age grabbing at your throat

squeezing out the last elements of youth

while holding onto that door knob marked, 62,

offering a portal to early retirement.

 

Was a gasp you exhaled in those hours

when work feels like an avalanche

burying your heart under a mound of memos,

a death moan rehearsal, one of many,

coming unexpectedly and way too often

along the way to med havens

or the bliss from lotions

that soothe the pain tremors

reaching into your marrow

like a white hot blade.

 

Then suddenly, the bureaucratic moguls,

those uncivil, civil servants

stream their festoons of claret rules,

changing that door to read, 68,

for anyone born in your year.

 

Fingers shriveling in vigor

subject to the quivers

of cumbersome declines in vitality

try to dredge from the memory

some memento of hope

of how this age is a zenith in potency

instead of a slide down life’s hill,

remembering those who achieved some greatness

at this golden time in their lives,

Ed Sullivan introduce the Beatles,

Louis Pasteur developed his vaccine for rabies,

Franklin Roosevelt earned a fourth term as President

and John Wayne won an Oscar.

 

Doing my best to reclaim hope’s ghost,

over how somewhere in this decaying dream

I’ll find an exit without a grave marker.