Page 3 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Three

I nod and smile—but miss two-thirds
Of what it was you put in words:
I’d rather think you have, my dear,
Sweet nothings whispered in my ear.

An old actor has no prayer
Of besting a younger player;
In the wings he barely survives:
Act Two in American lives.

Morticians work in a back room
To fill that abhorrent vacuum
Imagined to contain the soul:
But nature won’t reveal the hole.

“Ripe” has many meanings gotten—
Aged and youthful, fresh and rotten;
Reaper: as long as I’m ticking,
I’ll say when I’m ripe for picking.

Thus the sandwich generations
Must decide when short of rations:
To spread them thinly on each tongue,
Or starve the old or eat the young.

Cosmic motors we can’t unplug,
Death and gravity jointly tug
Life-forms at a permanent pace:
Forward in time, downward in space.