On Getting Older, but Not Wiser

I wrote this poem after I turned thirty-nine and felt like I was still making a lot of the same mistakes in life, and, working through it, realized that’s not the only thing that matters.

I thought I saw Wisdom At age twenty-seven, A dim shadow in moonlight, Helped not by sunglasses.

At twenty-eight, I turned a corner Saw him dancing with no music A loser, a loner I walked on by and I tossed him a quarter

Thirty came, and I entered a new place, Little lines on my face, near my lips and eyes, From smiling and crying and sometimes surprise But wisdom is a brow furrow at best, Easily misconstrued as confusion, a test

At thirty-three, I saw him on a walk He fled down an alley, not willing to talk But I didn’t get this far by being unclever It’s not the same as wisdom, but it’ll do as a leveler I doubled back and trapped him against concrete and brick But he had a knife, and I, Just a stick.

He stabbed me three times with a flick of his wrist And fled before I could ask “What’s the trick To living a life of wonder and whim And finding oneself and all that schtick?”

At age thirty-seven, the bastard was quicker than ever But I’d set a trap, and he took a header Into a puddle of kerosene and gas

With a match strike, I asked: Did he have any last words, This Wisdom, for me? But before he could say, I was warming my hands

Now thirty-nine, I feel bad I did it. He might have said things that would’ve caused me to get it But wisdom, you see, isn’t the only master There’s still empathy, kindness, courage, and humor There’s still forty, I hope, and more opportunities To dance to a music that isn’t exactly a sound So much as the ground and the sky all around.

I’m a writer living in Minneapolis, MN, USA.