July 2021
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Bio Note: I teach at Boston University and live between 15 minutes (the 3 a.m. commute) to 2 ½ hours (the ice storm commute) outside the city. A collection of short fiction, The Thirteenth Studebaker, was published this spring.

Author's Note: In the first poem, one in a series, the crusty widow Mrs. Podolski delivers another monologue to her young friend. The title of the second piece sums up its form, theme, and frustrated aspiration.

Mrs. Podolski Tells Me What’s In Store

The first sign is when you find yourself 
grousing more about the next generation
than the last. Nothing new in that, my dear.  
Today’s youths are rotten from the bottom of
their hearts. They are malicious and lazy.
They will never be as youth was before.
Some archaeologist—or, I like to think,
a grad student—dug up a pot in Babylon 
and found that inscribed on it. I can just
picture that potter, pissed off with his   
scoffing teenage brats and their feckless friends. 
 
An alternative formula is N + 5,
favored by the ironic and the vain.  
What’s N? However old you happen to 
be, my dear. When I hear some crone or geezer 
lauded for being young at heart—never 
mind a coronary may be minutes 
away—I’m not sure if it’s down to a 
resilient spirit or mere childishness, 
though I suspect plain hard-core denial.  

You’ve time yet, dear. Anyway, it’s hard to 
be sure when somebody’s middle-aged.  
It was fifteen for Franz Schubert, nine for 
poor Tom Chatterton. Of course, you could say
they never got so far. But some need no time
at all.  Take Aristotle—the man was 
middle-aged at birth. He’s like the uncle 
who’s seldom wrong but often boring.  
The via media isn’t exactly 
inspiring as ideals go, is it? I’ve 
always felt Plato was the younger man.  

Not to worry, my dear. Sufficient unto 
the day. You’ve time yet with that porcelain 
complexion and burnished hair. But middle 
age will come and, for most, it’s a plateau 
stretching over decades, flat as Kansas, 
until you’re sure it’s everlasting and                             
you drive on until threescore-and-ten 
rears up like Mount Elbert, a peak so tall
and biblical even the faithless can’t deny it.

A Sort of Sonnet

Like a landscape scraped off some moon 
with a far-off five-watt-bulb for sun, 
a dim plain unfurls inane and gray.   
Across the trackless flats you run 
leaving shallow footprints.  Headway 
is hard.  You feel stuck and static
and think, like some Eleatic, 
that every pace must start with half 
a step, a quarter, an eighth.  
Unrequited love, a May afternoon,  
such subjects only make you laugh.
You pray for progress without faith 
that anything will come out right,
a couplet flicker then burn bright.
©2021 Robert Wexelblatt
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