I used to be good

At being old

When I was young

& everyone I wanted to be

Was old. My youth spent lavishly

On the tragedy of another’s old age.

Now my scales level

Fearsomely like a game

Where everything could come crashing down

With one wrong move. I pass

For a younger version

Of an older person, but remember

Being an actual

Young person

With all the time in the world

To contemplate

Death like the dead poets in my favorite books

Of poems; those English Dept icons

Who succinctly seized upon

the point of it all

With voices travel weary, yet clear

As they flew through

Their years

For the benefit of an admiring apprentice?

Hardly. Piercing

& pierced by

the improbability

That they lived

to tell about

any of it

at all.