Unable
Age creeps subversively -
that surreptitious “thief in the night”
like death - but insidious or abrupt,
it’s progressive. A landscape in Time.
Things wear down and out - accepted!
and, alongside accumulative usage
with accident or overkill
eventually arrives at becoming unable.
Unable,
despite optimum fitness achieved,
good attitudes towards potentiality, longevity, worth and purpose:
unable to run so fast
remember details so quickly,
climb mountains, ride wild horses,
however willing, skilled and desirous.
Even when it’ a lifes-work, hearts desires accomplished:
suddenly, gradually - unable.
Ah me! Yet still thinking along that same upward/onward trajectory!
Refined and trained to optimum,
peak performance - to atleast maintain it
if not upgrade or attempt to overcome!
- overriding retirement statistics,
racial and social stereotypes.
Finding oneself
plateaued, flattening, lessening.
Ah, but that’s OK! Am getting old!
Recognizing mortality too!
Actually, getting bigger,
as an old friend onetime said.
The experiential bit is, I note,
that for every thing I get less able at,
un-able
in the very process of becoming aware,
it triggers some sea-change else:
For example, the joy of coming across
wild ponies on the moors;
rejoining far-flung loved ones;
the delight of skinny dipping surprises;
the satisfactions of meeting in cafes,
for walks or adventures:
these pleasures don’t get lost
but morph to experiencing
similar joy and inspiration
when beloved others do it, go there
- any others, eventually, bless them!
I not only don’t “miss” those things
(as they are always there)
but by sharing the same, by knowing;
as if a ballooning virtual reality enlarges,
becomes solid and synonymous,
conjoined with actual experience
embracing, including more than only me.
Not just vicarious arm-chair travelling
as if, instead of,
let alone mental jiggery,
rationalizing by way of compensation,
But good as.
I know it’s not for me, on my behalf
like a memorial hike!
it’s someone’s else’s own experience.
I accept I’m not there,
not piggy-backing in others spaces
nor finding gratification in projection!
Even so, in reviving past moments,
remembering our inter-connectedness:
- tribe, species, the collective -
whether by images or divers re-mind-ers
we find no thing is irretrievably gone
or lost for ever.