Lucky Day Still

Lucky day still spent wrestling the private problems

and obsessions encountered first in your youth

but played out now within the spectacle of public aging

(tho, strangely, as you age you feel less & less seen

by the young, a citizen active in frequencies of light waves

increasingly invisible—not even boring to 15-year-olds).

Of course, some problems you once had really have

vanished—you can sense that as your daughter lays out

the tactics crucial to "pre-gaming," her teen friends

setting out to get toasted or stoned before house parties,

parties at which they've been warned not to drug or drink—

no longer a worry for you (except as relates, of course,

to your daughter)—you can drink & drug somewhat

"it would seem" to your heart's content. Not your style,

you say? Not any longer? Still, the urge to lift or get

lifted from self-conscious woes hasn't gone away totally,

has it? Wanting to be free of your self has always

been a mission big in your church—evangelically so!

You got in a way (the wrong way) your wish—

your skin certainly got looser on you—baggy, rounder,

wrinkled—prescriptions for departure—the rigging's

untuned, & no milk bath full of rose hips can compensate

(so your friend likes to say), no fish oil omega-3

in gel capsules manufactured by entrepreneurial ex-hippies

no wifely fruit smoothies or mod boots will cure

jowls now or allow for glamour without the costume.

Source: Standoff (Graywolf Press, 2016)