Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind --
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested --
the snow
is covered with broken
seed husks
and the wind tempered
with a shrill
piping of plenty.
WC Williams wrote this poem when he was 37 years young, which accounts for the poem's piping plenty ending. I, at 65 years OLD, dare to re-write Williams' poem, thereby making it a truer definition of old age: Old age is a flight of gray whispery crows skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind until, wearied, they dropp from the sky onto broken weedstalks: spiked bent blotches on a white blank field no longer by the shrill wind disquieted. -Stanton Hager, March 2012
Zen-like concision and beautiful flow. One of the few poems by the author that I can appreciate.
So much imaginations and likes it.