I am old at last and unexpectedly. The blue hills remembered, gone -
Whittled into strip mall plinths, infested with AirBNB.
This is the place we made and we are lost in it.
There’s no crescendo between promise and reality
It’s more of a idle sonata: sour notes, played badly,
To an uncertain denouement.
We were told not to trust anyone over thirty, and that was good advice
At a certain age the fiction of hope gives way to other things
Adrift in a sea of doubt and distrust,
Occasional calm, moments of longing, long dry silences.
Is forty the new thirty? Perhaps. It’s not the best-by date that matters
So much as it is the sell-by date
The moment when tattered souls are exchanged
In the barter among desire, despise and need.