Their Age

While sea stars bask in the morning glory
And dying light of each day’s passing,
The elderly spend their final days
In either cold sanctuaries,
Or are prodded into institutionalization.
Those withered ancient ones
Know time is always ticking.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
To age is to be bombarded by a geriatric winter;
It is perceived in one’s very bones,
Decalcifying and aching from the pangs
Of a body in arthritic collapse.
Mechanical failures ground their bodies
And Mother Nature claims back
What only she could birth:
Life.
Do the dead have ears?
Who talks, who listens,
To the despondent cries of those forced
Into a moribund existence.
Our forelorned, wrinkled forbearers of a past century,
Residents of convalescence,
Die.