50

Other people try for youth,
Seeking its fountainhead,
Chasing it with creaking bones,
Grabbing despite the arthritis and gout
Handicapping their grips.

Others are afraid of time’s march,
Seek to avoid confrontation with
The inevitable pull of gravity,
The fading of locks to translucence,
The fireworks of veins beneath skin
That each year makes even more thin.

I have had a half-century of youth:
Being carded at bars into my 40s
Made me welcome the gray locks,
The only ID I need for cold ale on a hot night.

There is gratitude that
The doctors still can’t
Find anything wrong enough with me
To warrant a delisting of favorite foods,
Lifelong habits, not even the bad ones.

There is gratitude that
I didn’t get the pink casket
I asked for as a child
Laying in a hospital bed
Trying not to believe
Doctors’ prognoses
That I wouldn’t see the next week.

I am alive.
Gravity can tug all it wants,
My mane can change to white,
My waistline can grow a bit more,
And I won’t complain.

Survival was never assured,
Yet here I am:
Crow’s feet perching over my smile,
Dove’s feathers in my raven wings,
With my weight exactly where
Doctors kept saying it should be
For decades.

Here I am:
Vocabulary sharpened,
Pen flowing even better than ever,
And life no longer the one endless stress
That it was in my younger years.

Here I am, owning myself
Even better than when I first received her.
I am not other people:
This vintage of Alma is to be enjoyed
Like rare whisky kept in its cask
Until the time was right
For the pouring.