Erosion

Grey wrinkles on a pallid face,
eroded by the wearing pace
of life,
and the arrow of time.

Deep pathways carved by tears
for loved ones gone for years:
in memory
living proud and strong.

Captured on our aging skin,
echoes of love that dwell within
carve deep
our sense of loss.

Ancient canyons wrought by grief,
as time rushed by us like a thief:
a monument
to loss, and love.

A Word, By Any Other Name

I have never had looks,
and have long had no hair.
My feet are malformed
from a childhood of wearing
small shoes, for too long.
Struggles with my weight
have always been with me,
and my eyes are failing,
as my hearing fades.
Rosacea blots my wrinkled skin,
and my eyebrows are bushy, unruly,
and white.

My faults are self-catalogued,
and I’ve learned to embrace them,
and have come to accept 
who I am.

What I have going for me,
that gives me much joy,
is a Mensa entry test
in top one percent.
My vocabulary,
though archaic, and dull,
is vast, relentlessly controlled
by grammar  police within.
My quest for knowledge
is constant,  epistemologically based.
Ontology is a recent friend,
with whom I spend much time.
Philosophy, cosmology, 
and quantum physics
vie for my fickle attention.
So much to think about,
and so little time,
that I often become overwhelmed.

So when you say that my musings
may be considered grandiose by some,
I think your horizons are nearer than mine,
and you have no idea just who I am.

April Snow, and Low Biorhythms

I feel the chill wind
of irrelevance
drafting under the door
of my reality.

Trapped in the slipstream
from the cannonball of time,
I am swept along,
battered by objects
that I cannot avoid.

A frail transparency
envelopes me,
and the strength of my youth
is but a memory
that smells of past summers.

My focus fades,
as dark clouds block the sun,
and I am unable to recover
a smile that has been missing
far too long.

Tomorrow will be different
I say, wondering as I speak,
if I can escape the vortex
of today, to bask in the light
of a sun just faintly remembered.

Looking in a mirror
I see an old man
who is almost translucent,
and not quite here.