(Inspiration from A.A. Gill, Is Further Away)
Do something – a game, a quiz, a trick.
Find an old person
a random, strange old person,
a lurking crusty.
Look – get really close.
Don’t be frightened,
they’re not contagious.
How old?
Look … wrinkles, crepey sunken cheeks,
frail, eroded jaw, thin folds of wattle.
Count … the archipelagos of age spots.
Look … into fretted, damp eyes,
lids aging like ragged bedroom curtains.
Add up the years,
pick a number,
a decade between sixty and ninety.
Can’t read the gradations and patinas?
Can’t tell,
because you don’t look,
don’t look, because you don’t care.
Who cares how old the old are?
Old is a destination.
There is nothing after old,
just nothing.
Take another look.
What determined old?
What made you think they weren’t just young
with a lived-in face and a hangover?
If you can’t tell what age old is,
how do you know when they’ve got there?
