You wear your insides on your outsides
Letting ants climb up your external intestines
as if they were thrown a wide rope and exploring the world.
And when it rains, they ride you down like a water tube.
You don’t protest. You’re used to it.
Internal organs like secret tunnels
Communicating to the world.

Listen to the plants when they talk to you.

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(aged 55 to 65 years)

I was so sad for you when you lost all your hair
It occurred gradually for several years
A strand or two fallen every time you wore a hat
Or scrubbed your scalp in the shower.

Then, one day, you were just bald and
We could all see the contours of you.
Your real shape...
Your true self...

Don’t worry. We will still admire you.
And when we gawk and quiver
It isn’t because of what is missing.
It is because of what is left.


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(75 to 80 years)

It hurts to be alive day after day
Feel the sun along the length of you
Blister hard and uneven
Yet the people still come
Observe and admire
As if they had never seen
Such an old Bonsai before.

Maybe they haven’t….
Take the gasp from their throats and
turn it into another sharp leaf.
To tell the world you keep surviving.

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(aged 60-70 years old)

Myrtle was my great great aunt.
Of four sisters, she was exceptional.
Her husband, however, not so much!
He was a horrible farmer.
He literally didn’t know his way around a barn.
So, instead of sitting around and moaning,
She decided to tat.

Tatting is this thing people do with their hands
When they like to make hours and reality fancy
A manic frenzied finger filled fun
Tablecloths and three dimensional flowers standing in a vase
Intricate human spiderwebs made to last
An unreal amazing woman!
She made her own patterns out of her life.

Myrtle also had a huge garden.
She liked to use her hands in the dirt.
Getting close to the Earth where she’d eventually join
Planting seeds and watching patiently
Observing how each one took in the sun
at different angles and was changed.
When you live long enough, you can learn to wait for things.


I visited Myrtle when I was young (under 10) in Pennsylvania
A young girl beholds a woman nearly 100 years older
Wondering if that will be her future, too.
Myrtle lived to be 107.
She lived on her own until she was over 100,
tatting and making fudge.
When asked what her secret was, she said
She never ate greasy food (and chocolate makes you live longer.)


All of these things are true.


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(aged 75 to 80 years)

JWP doesn't care about your outfits.
Your dating life.
Your intense career.
Your lack of work life balance.

JWP doesn't care about Coronavirus
or the Delta
or Omicron strains
Or if you get sick at all.

JWP doesn't care if everything you love
And everything you've hoped for
Is gone by tomorrow.
As if it never even existed in the first place.

What a beautiful tree!

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