I Shall Go On Growing Older

I shall go on growing older,
I am already as old as a wrinkled skin of a peach,
I am already as old as a dusty road lumbering into distant eyes
Of distant night cities.
I have shown up to show you a wrinkled hand
And to delight in the photographs of your children.
I have had so little to say for so many years,
I let the night hours grow mute,
I left an entire civilization of crickets and darkness
Outside my door,
I slept in the comfort of day
While the night passed outside me,
A distant wind invisible to the inside of houses.
Here is the syntax of the shadow of a tree,
Here is the vocabulary of a night breeze,
Of the invisible paths of the moon,
There rides a car with the planet of day huddled within its cab,
Its plangent radio,
Here the planet yearns its silent spirit.

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