Archive
10/23/09
Sixty-Nine
By the time most folks get to be sixty-nine, They're too old, disinterested, and functionally out of it To do anything relevant, including taking up precious space, Casting votes for dogcatchers and bottlewashers, Swelling the rank-and-file rolls of Medicare and Medicaid.
Certainly, just getting it up, once in a month of decennial Sundays, Is the meanest of mean feats, Even for the least valetudinarian of their aging demographic, Something on the order of running a one-and-a-half-minute mile Or remebering all the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner.
As far as mastering the complexities of word processing, e-mail, Breezing through blogging, setting manuscripts in InDesign, Manipulating Photoshop, to remove thirty, forty, fifty years From their depressing, pathetic AARP mug shots — forget it! They can't even plug their PC's into the proper socket.
Ah, but always we find, among graying populations, Anomalies, curiosities, freaks, exceptions to the rule (General, specific, applied, golden, thumb, otherwise), Those who surprise us, inspire us, with astonishing prowess, The illuminated wisdom of their varied-experience years,
Rarified human beings such as me, myself, and I, Who see no hard-and-fast empirical reason why, At sixty-nine, seventy-five, ninety-three and a third, They can't still compete against Tiger Woods, Bono, Jesus, Bill Gates, Yo-Yo Ma, Barack Obama, God. Indeed, tonight, dining out by myself, In a restaurant boasting a robust meat-market bar, I dare say, as a ripe old sea dog, I feel up to the task, Ready, willing, and able, to the man jack aboard my cruiser, To give any maiden vessel in port a christening, with my prow.
10/23/09
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