By Liz Rosenberg
Old men, as time goes on, grow softer, sweeter,
while their wives get angrier.
You see them hauling the men across the mall
or pushing them down on chairs,
"Sit there! and don' you move!"
A lifetime of yes has left them
hissing bent as snakes.
It seems even their bones will turn
against them, once the fruitful years are gone.
Something snaps off the houselights,
and the cells go dim;
the chicken hatching back into their egg.
Oh lifetime of silence!
words scattered like a sybil's leaves.
Voice thrown into a baritone storm--
whose shrilling is a soulful wind
blown through an instrument
that cannot beat time
but must make music
any way it can.
take me there jenny says you don't say snapshot
~~home~~