©2014 by Jack A. Urquhart

One after another, they fall—
chestnuts
from the hospital bed,
the utterances of old age:
“ ‘Beats me, how time
gets away,”
she crepitates,
this crisp
of sun-dried human being,
this wisp
of ossified womanhood.
“In my mirror this morning,
a face like flotsam,
a stranger,
half-dead;
eyes hard 
as driftwood.
Not me at all!”

And indeed!  You remember
her washed away glory,
her once-upon-a-time
top-down glamour,
movie-star tresses
frothing,
wind wafting from an Olds
Super Eighty-Eight.
Yet even then, some hint
Of a battle born state;
some white-washed
mysterious loss
never to be mentioned?

How you ached
to be like her then.
And now, you are:
same hawkish profile,
and withered smile;
same hypothermic eyes
benumbed
in their hollows.
“Yes,” you concede,
considering your own
unspeakables.
“We’re changed by our lives,”
you prattle,
surrendering to cliché.
“Changed into someone else.”