“I am a very foolish fond old man,”
Glenda Jackson says, playing King Lear.
She looks so much smaller

than when I watched her perform
in “A Touch of Class.”
To see her rage on the heath

is to realize how lucky I am,
to go on writing, as she goes on acting.
Lear, crowned with nettles,

holds Cordelia in his arms.
The daughter who loved him,
a body now, a thing.

He touches her dead eyes.
Glenda, wrinkled, regal,
takes her bow.

I stand to applaud.
O body, breathless,
that used to burn.
                        

Soon I’ll be the only one left.
Almost ready, I don’t buy new clothes.
Not skinny enough,

my jeans are out of style,
like the shoes, stored in the bottom
of my closet, the L.L. Bean moccasins,

bound to the darkness,
the huaraches whose toes point
toward the light that shines

through the bedroom window,
like the pure human light
that still lives inside me.
                        

Evening gathers in a long-stemmed goblet.
The night lamp turns on.
Steam rises from the teakettle,

My neighbor’s car starts up.
Outside, from two trees,
the hammock sags like an old woman.

I boil pasta, make a stew,
like life, a bit of this and that
from the refrigerator.

Load the dishwasher,
pour old hurt into a wine glass,
fight age with dark chocolate squares,

think of the beautiful children
in strollers I ogle,
the yellow forsythia, the peonies

deep red, suddenly here,
plantains in butter with cinnamon,
falling asleep, awakening again.

Each year,
my two granddaughters
grow more beautiful.