"...Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?" ~ The Beatles
Back in Liverpool when he was only 14, Paul
McCartney plunked out a melody that would go on
to become When I'm Sixty-Four. I can't remember
what I was doing when I was 14—perhaps hiding
in my room reading novels or the latest issue of Jingle
Songbook, lip syncing to Pers Lab on the radio.
Now I'm 64, on Thursday I'll turn 65. Evenings,
when I come home, all these moths with glitter
on their wings crowd around the porch light. They
obviously have a better night life than I do. I still have
most of my hair. I can't mend a fuse, but I installed
a bidet all by myself during the pandemic, when everyone
was worried about toilet paper shortages. In my head I'm
still in my thirties, much of my life ahead of me. Time
to sing a few more songs around a bonfire, remember
what it's like to be young and bright and reckless,
though by now I have a bed I'm always being told
I should lie in because I made it. I've lost more
than one of a pair of earrings, and many of those I love
are gone. There are days I feel every bit of hard-
earned knowledge wrapped around my bones—
a kind of armor it won't be easy to shrug off even if
I tried, but with enough spaces of tenderness
that say it's okay to ask for more.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
