On Growing Old
Joshua Schneyer

It’s the far field growing nearer,
the days shortening, as the sun
dips and the moon rises
huge over fields
where the mice move
through tall grass.
Night. Stars.
An owl lifts from its branch
above a field.
 
There’s nothing to be done
but endure the aching hip,
the muscles’ atrophy, the face
once smooth, now
giving way to gravity,
the memory,
less quick to seize
the sought-for word,
the lyric to an old
song, impossible
to forget, now gone
into that murky space
where misplaced memories go.
 
There’s prescience in not knowing
yet knowing all too well.
Though we’ve not been here before,
it is familiar. Signs upon signs:
the ebb tide, the guttering candle,
the sun setting, snow falling fast
past a dusk-filled window.
 
On a black snow-covered branch,
the owl, returned from hunting,
seated now, silhouetted
against the snow-lit twilight sky,
having had its fill,
hoots once,
hoots again,
takes a last long look
into the darkening December night,
the diminishment.

 

                                                                                    ~ ~ ~
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