“the gloomy expectation after passing 80 years old”

In twilight rooms the clocks’ hands slow,  
Long shadows spilling on the floor,  
The world resumes its eager flow—  
A distant, half-remembered roar.  
At eighty-two, the morning’s pale,  
Unbuttoned windows let in air  
That smells of day-old rain, of frail  
Regret and gentle, nameless care.

The calendar is thinner now,  
Its pages flutter, pale with ghosts;  
Each friend departed shows me how  
I’m left in quiet, private hosts—  
Memories crowd the mantelpiece,  
Like letters left but never sent.  
I sip my tea and sense a peace  
So delicate it feels unmeant.

I dream but dare not shape the dream  
Beyond the boundary of months—  
A future’s faint and silver seam  
That never quite unravels once.  
My gait is slow, but pain is mild,  
It’s waiting—soft, ambiguous—  
To be remembered, or compiled  
In stories rarely told to us.

Yet still, some curious surprise—  
The robin on the garden wall,  
The way the child next door will rise  
And wave, unknowing, through it all.  
Gloom may gather, thick as rain  
On roofs that creak in midnight air,  
But breath still comes, and with it, pain—  
And life, insistent, lingers there.

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