Who hears the little fiction of a joke
Recognizes something familiar or unfamiliar
Lurking in one’s own life
Or that of a person unknown

You don’t get to be sixty being a fool
Or all the fools are dead by sixty
But everywhere are seen old fools
And the dead no more foolish than the quick

Some happy few no doubt retain
The brains of a twenty-year-old
But grouchy befuddlement increases
And what word was supposed to go with elegant

Narratives of trauma no longer fashionable
Not even those of entire peoples entire continents
The recipe supposed to be followed in sequence
And insults to the brain well before twenty

So they never have been poems
And their creator no poet
And somebody should now step in and say
But you are a poet

Still to step in
Though no longer graceful nor elegant
No longer working the illusions of grace or elegance
Yet still to perform the chaste minuet