Science of Growing Old

The universe swelled again
growing like a family to leave
the first born less and less
until any moment could take

his place, redefine his shadow
as anything important, the new
so cute, so cuddly, so hopeful.
We age into the thing that did its best,

flying to immortal rocket to the moon,
until creaking bones, recurring cough
and you don’t want to know retire us,
destined, too, to dust, like all the rest.


Units of time shrink like dead worms
drying on the sidewalk after the rain.
Soon, time will end, as if it never was,
and here and there just disappears.

And we find that death holds no interest,
all the memories in our hands goo
we pull from the bucket and rejoice
as the wet colors drip from our fingers,

our past, with all the worst forgotten
as best we could. We were once alive.
No need to say aloud that just this
was quite enough. We love astronauts,

the distant planets of which they dream,
and bodies placed on candles built
to explode us past the gravity we share.
The old grow uncertain it was ever there.