Aging beautifully

By JoJo Ball

April Inventory

BY W. D. SNODGRASS

The green catalpa tree has turned

All white; the cherry blooms once more.   

In one whole year I haven’t learned   

A blessed thing they pay you for.   

The blossoms snow down in my hair;   

The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.   

The sleek, expensive girls I teach,   

Younger and pinker every year,   

Bloom gradually out of reach.

The pear tree lets its petals drop   

Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now   

I have to nudge myself to stare.

This year they smile and mind me how   

My teeth are falling with my hair.   

In thirty years I may not get

Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,   

I made myself a little list

Of all the things I’d ought to know,   

Then told my parents, analyst,   

And everyone who’s trusted me   

I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about

A book or memorized one plot.   

Or found a mind I did not doubt.

I learned one date. And then forgot.   

And one by one the solid scholars   

Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.

I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;   

One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.   

Lacking a source-book or promotions,   

I showed one child the colors of   

A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,

To bark back, loosen love and crying;   

To ease my woman so she came,   

To ease an old man who was dying.   

I have not learned how often I

Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie

Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;   

That my equivocating eye

Loves only by my body’s hunger;

That I have forces, true to feel,

Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority

And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,   

My eyes in spectacles shall see

These trees procure and spend their leaves.   

There is a value underneath

The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,   

We shall afford our costly seasons;

There is a gentleness survives

That will outspeak and has its reasons.   

There is a loveliness exists,

Preserves us, not for specialists.

Aging beautifully 

By, JoJo Ball

Aging is solely inevitable, 

yet it is the goal of so many to

conquer time by abstaining from it. Age

terrifies most people because of the

emphasis society puts on it.

God forbid if you are unfortunate,

If you are the one who is wrinkly.

Would you not feel ostricized by the ads?

You know the ones i'm referring to right?

The ones telling you that you are flawed.

Commercials tell us that we are flawed,

not based on any part of the true us

but based on how we "should" look to everyone.

You can't stop wrinkles from growing on your face

but with a small amount of cream you can?

You say this cream will reverse time itself?

This cream will take away these marks of shame? 

It has the power to restore my youth?

and only for the price of twenty bucks?

This couldn't possibly be! What's the catch?

The only catch is that you must conform,

you must take away these marks of wisdom,

These marks of experience: hideous.

All you have to do is sacrifice it.

All of your memories are no longer.

The credibility of age is gone.

The respect you have gained is all gone.

You have not aged beautifully at all.

Your beauty is gone, but you can fix it;

and only for the price of twenty bucks.