Stiff Gray Hairs
A poem of loss
We don’t think of loss
when we’re young.
We may escape it entirely,
if fortunate shines our way.
If not, loss comes as shock
unexpected
unplanned
unthinking.
It’s a hiccup in time —
a blunder
a miscalculation
a mistake
an error
that one so fresh and comely
should know the pain of loss
the missing of
something
or
someone
when life is in
its gathering stage,
its time of addition and multiplication,
not subtraction and division —
they come later with arthritis
and stiff, gray hairs growing
where they shouldn’t.
I feel the loss before it comes,
I feel its presence before it arrives,
a matter of months, weeks, days —
unknown
unbeckoned
unsurprising
it will come
as surely as those stiff gray hairs.
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© Dennett 2024
