There’s no entry into old age
but through the body’s door,
Hinged as it is at the spine,
Opened and closed by time.

Time touches and tinges
Each hair’s waxen shaft,
Turning it silver at its root,
Then branching out to white.

Next, the face’s pallor grows
Top heavy with accrued years;
Flesh sags from gravity’s pull,
And from the weight of tears.

The legs thin, muscles loosen,
The eyes, O golden windows, fog—
But the mind, great wheel, moves on
Through its own ageless seasons.

Time turns each of us inside out,
Tears our hearts wide open,
Tracks mud across our lives,
Until, vacating, we move beyond

Time to occupy a roofless house
Walled solely in ether, capacious
As light itself—that midway place
That’s neither here nor there.