Senior Moments Poem by gershon hepner

Having sex when getting older
may sometimes make a lover bolder
than when in what is called the prime,
though senior moments at nighttime
can be embarrassing if one
forgets, while one is having fun,
one’s partner’s name or one’s address,
or whether one has more or less
performed what one intended to,
and vainly searches for a clue
that might tell one one’s mission is
accomplished. There may be a quiz
when one has finished what one planned,
but often one can’t understand
exactly what it was one did.
I’m getting old, and yet my id
is stronger than my brain, methinks,
and sometimes I take forty winks
when I should be engaged in sex.
Old people’s life is so complex,
perhaps one ought, when getting older,
to show to love a colder shoulder,
for even moments that are senior
do not make older men less weenier,
or women much less hot to trot.
This is fact the young do not
appreciate. Please don’t forget:
I often do, and thus upset
my senior partner who is younger,
relieving, so I hope, her hunger,
though maybe I do not. Who knows?
It’s very hard to diagnose
precisely what’s occurred. I try,
and when I fail of course I lie.

Inspired by a review by Ben Brantley’s of a production of Hamlet at the Delacorte Theater, focusing not on Michael Stuhlbarg’s Hamlet by Sam Waterston’s Polonius (Whips and Scornes of Time, Stinging All They Touch, ” NYT, June 18,2008) (see “Polonius”) :
And Mr. Waterston, who is today best known as the uber-prosecutor Jack McCoy on “Law & Order, ” invests Polonius with real pathos as well as humor. His presence here takes on an extra, enriching dimension if you know that Mr. Waterston played Hamlet for the Public in 1975. The actorly enjoyment as well as intelligence he brings to Polonius three decades later is a heartening reminder that, senior moments aside, getting older doesn’t have to be a drag.


6/18/08