Almost every day, my kids tell me I’m old, gray, or decrepit. My son is fond of saying I have dementia if I have the slightest memory lapse, while my daughter comments on my “old man hobbies” because I use a birding app.
Aging is real and unavoidable. Below is a somewhat whimsical reflection on growing older (but not necessarily wiser). “Long in the Tooth” will be in my upcoming book The Anonymity of Waiting.
Long in the Tooth
Each day is longer
and longer in the tooth
‘til it’s pulled
My hair is the color of bone,
a Jolly Roger flag waving
in the wind
in which unbloomed buds drop,
blowing the shrapnel of wasted petals
over the ground
A Wandering Minstrel 