The middle-aged body requires an hour of physical activity per day to maintain the supple tone of a late-twenties one. And I’m not talking some token waving of the arms or a slow walk in the park with the terrier you won in the divorce: I mean heart-pounding, sweat-pouring *motion*. Jim Sharkey, Manual of Fitness Vol. II
I have heard of the atomic clock and wonder
why don’t we use it to measure time?
Why choose the cyclical rather than linear,
when time is a straight arrow anyway?
This blood that courses in my veins
is reborn every one-hundred and twenty days.
I punish this fifty-year-old flesh,
keep the fat from accumulating:
an hour a day and deprive the hunger
so that I might some day present it to her,
a gift to unwrap.
Some men want to have the last word
when what they say is patently absurd:
What of the men to come
down the long hall
of the centuries ahead?
Or other words whispered
past alien lips
recorded on adamantine tablets
in long forgotten crypts?
The universe is old, my sons
older than we can know.
To think the curtain falls just for thee
is all your hubris shows.
When I can no longer run,
I will walk. And
when I can no longer walk,
I will crawl. And
when I can no longer crawl
you will know I have died.
2023.09.05 – 2023.12.03
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