"Simply subtract your age from 65,
and that's how many good years you have left."
That makes mine fewer than minus three!
Once vim is reduced to a negative toddler,
is it O.K. to sit and forget half your French?
It is not. Instead, before I'm minus four,
I shall sing and descant upon love
an a language I as yet don't understand.
Perhaps I'll send him a postcard from Kandahar,
perhaps I'll send him an elephant tusk
made out of marzipan
by a lovely, crazy German living in Irkutsk;
he apparently thinks old age is the time
to stare like a cow while a fly
navigates a bulbous nose. Should I rage?
No, rages are unseemly after minus three;
having outgrown my terrible minus twos,
I'm ready for a raucous minus youth,
and if I find a tarantula in La Descubierta,
I promise I won't send him a fanged memento mori
in a silver candy box, crawling on blue cheese.
Thomas Dorsett
This poem first appeared in The Broadkill Review, May-June 2018
Notes
An actual self-help guru devised the formula mentioned in the poem, although I forget his name. Although the protagonist of the poem is a bit younger than I am, we both strongly believe that 65 is not the end of life!
and that's how many good years you have left."
That makes mine fewer than minus three!
Once vim is reduced to a negative toddler,
is it O.K. to sit and forget half your French?
It is not. Instead, before I'm minus four,
I shall sing and descant upon love
an a language I as yet don't understand.
Perhaps I'll send him a postcard from Kandahar,
perhaps I'll send him an elephant tusk
made out of marzipan
by a lovely, crazy German living in Irkutsk;
he apparently thinks old age is the time
to stare like a cow while a fly
navigates a bulbous nose. Should I rage?
No, rages are unseemly after minus three;
having outgrown my terrible minus twos,
I'm ready for a raucous minus youth,
and if I find a tarantula in La Descubierta,
I promise I won't send him a fanged memento mori
in a silver candy box, crawling on blue cheese.
Thomas Dorsett
This poem first appeared in The Broadkill Review, May-June 2018
Notes
An actual self-help guru devised the formula mentioned in the poem, although I forget his name. Although the protagonist of the poem is a bit younger than I am, we both strongly believe that 65 is not the end of life!
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