Poetry: At Thirty by Lynda Hull

Source: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/

I’m almost thirty.  Most days, I feel way older than that.  I was trying to find some good poems about aging/getting older, because every day I feel the gap between myself and the “youth” growing wider and deeper.  It’s both satisfying and frightening.

What are your favorite poems about aging?

At Thirty

Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep

with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke

rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart’s
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want

until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river

mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as

barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons

folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.

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