Senior Seminar

At 60, I have already outlived, at least in duration, most of the writers of my closest study. Marcus Aurelius died just short of 59; Michel de Montaigne at 59; Henry David Thoreau, 44; Marcel Proust, 51. Of that select bibliography, only Henry Adams have I yet to eclipse in longevity, who died at 80. Shakespeare died at 52. His achievement, astounding as it is, gave Henry Adams pause to imagine the Bard’s death the greatest tragedy in literature. “I wish Shakespeare had lived long enough to draw an old man from his own point of view,” he wrote, “drama lost its greatest creation when Shakespeare died young. At about 75 he would have been worth reading.” (Henry was in his early 70s when he penned that remark.) My other Henry, Henry David, had his doubts. He conceded the old aged to be “not without honor of a kind,” but couldn’t recommend us highly for wisdom or “important advice.” Between my Henries, I take a middle position. While maturity may be no better an instructor of youth than, well, youth itself, who inhabit an entirely new environment of opportunity, it may reasonably instruct us, the aged, a sort of senior seminar. An old, perhaps the oldest school. Let us think, if only to ourselves.

Happy Birthday to Me

Jerontion, 2018

Here I sit, an old man in the first month of old age,

reading, writing, thinking, and loving again, still,

as well as ever.

Which, truth be told, may never have been all that well,

but isn’t bad now for an old man. She,

younger—by a month—doesn’t complain.

The wars passed me by. I didn’t even have to avoid them:

flee north, go to school, pull strings, fake bone spurs.

I thought more than once about joining up, the reserves,

but she would have none of it. So I occupied more domestic trenches,

keeping my head down, my nose clean, to a grindstone

that wasn’t particularly stony and didn’t grind.

And if you did that—and were white—you’d be all right, mostly,

receive your threescore ten, plus maybe another decade for good behavior;

afford to live the dream, lower case a, make enough so as to lose track of the Joneses,

completely; retire in due time, travel, dick around, one of the one percent of the world.

The house paid for, the children launched, or lodged near unto,

I make her tea in the morning, sometimes an egg on the weekend, a little mushroom;

she prophesies the direst of futures,

so I wear a helmet, cut down on sugar, eat greens,

my bald head, under a white shell, invulnerable.

Not a dull head, though, mine after forty years at university, the church of reason.

Not brilliant, though, either, nobody’s star, just an able curate, pastorally inclined,

to those for whom life included a life of the mind—Justice, Beauty, Truth—however briefly.

Great conversations were had, until Power intruded, and Money, transforming themselves

from stubborn facts of life to penultimate realities. In those prior times,

there was nothing better for this old ecclesiast than to

“make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw,

that it was from the hand of God.” (God long rumored dead.)

Here’s what History taught me: we kill one another

all the time, with cruelties both ingenious and inane,

admittedly less of late,

but we will not kill this planet, however we extinct ourselves.

When we fear the end of the “world,” we mean Homo sapiens, so called,

not the Earth per se, which abides forever—or 60 billion years more, give or take—

and marvelously, even without us to marvel.

And here is what Religion tells me: “you will be judged.”

And that’s all. No Commandments, just a single reminder,

all the more ominous for its brevity.

Oh, the grumbling, grimacing, grousing, growling, the tiresome “grrr” of old pale men—

my father, Eliot, Henry, Fred, the Hammer Asses, all dead but my own old man,

who’s not at all well, plodding behind the lawn mower,

slow, fragile, sleep-apneaed. In the midst of the Grreatest Generation,

came Tony the Tiger. Old dudes, enough!

We have had our hour upon the stage, hours, millennia, in fact.

Time to go, fade out.

There are other ways of being great, softer, milder, gentler ways.

Life is easier, better, materially, quantitatively and qualitatively;

but we aren’t improved, not up to our times, nor wiser, nor happier: we rant,

blankly and not in verse, for attention, cash, self-expression.  Shshsh.

In this not uncomfortable chair I sit, tea at hand,

a newly old man with a j-name in the month of the fallen leaves.