Older, Aging & Old
by
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. . . . So, you can see, I just gave up. I, now here, writing about why I did not write an introduction to this chapbook, rather than offering to you a brilliant and moving pedagogy concerning the living of one’s life into the later years.
But, forgive me. I did try. Let me simply say that, upon the pages that follow, I offer some of the experiences that have instructed me during this journey of mine into older living. It is a journey of which you will not hear me hark, but one of which I have tried to write sensibly and with few detours. As for detours, there is no more time. I now study most carefully of the route and, as I move along it, hope to grow in wisdom of this marvel called conscious life.
Would you join me, please . . . and I hope this will be one of forty-three other reasons why:
To Her, Away Now
She, away now, I yearn for her—
Knowing my life incomplete without her,
At my best denying so; I, ever
Adamant that she make the bed while
I do my best to make her in it, and
Later, clean the kitchen after her provision
Of a tasty meal. This while I,
Engaged in chores I call more important,
Engage those more important chores.
And, yes, she away, yes, I yearn for her—
In a moment of reflection rare
I see, indeed, that I yearn for her—
After thirty-four years my chest still swells
With my pride of her; I who like to show her off
Though we are old and few hold interest in us.
When I join her tomorrow I shall wrap
My arms around her, pull her close,
Feel her breath upon my face, her eyes, wary
Like prey before mine, until the brush of her lips
And the softness of her cheek accept me,
And I spend a precious moment in embrace
Both ephemeral and, oh, so sadly, temporal.
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About the Book
I won’t claim, like many do, that this thing called aging sneaked up on me. After all, I have been growing older for quite some time. On the other hand, it wasn’t until I came to realize that the whole process would end up at old that I started to pay attention. With no defense against the inevitability of headlong growth . . . more frankly known as shrinkage . . . and being locked in with it alone for twenty-four hours every day, I decided to make a game of it. For those of you who do not just smirk at the back covers of chapbooks but actually read the poetry inside—you, the twerps, nerds, dweebs, wimps, duffers, dolts, rubes, yokels, geeks, goody two-shoes, molly-coddled milquetoasts, and jellyfish literary intellects of the world—I would call my activity a study . . . a research project, if you will . . . of a qualitative kind. The design was carefully constructed and carried out by someone other than myself, but I did manage to track the results. The more cogent outcomes I compressed into the rough lines of poetry that you will find published within this otherwise fine chapbook. I hope you will open the cover and read a few. And for the many readers of Earth Dirt & Dust—my six-chapbook anthology of poetry—who demanded a full treatment of poetic thought dedicated to the actualities of aging, I hope you enjoy.
About the Author
Zolen Caló awoke into a dilemma caused by Southern European genetics faced off against North American opportunity. In his efforts to merge the two extremes, he came to find his greatest nourishment in books. After he worked his way through