The Old Story

clipped from writersalmanac.publicradio.org

He Gets Around to

Answering the Old Question

by Miller Williams

He doesn't see as well as he thinks he remembers.
His fingers sometimes find it hard to bend.
He often can't find the name to go with a face.

Sometimes he doesn't hear but decides to pretend.

Weekends, week by week, are closer together.
Sometimes he has to sit down to put on his pants.
No lady seems to mind if he calls her Honey,

never grins nor even throws a glance.

Sometimes he's told himself what all this means.
"Every year some more of me is dead,
but there's a lot of stuff still left to collapse."

He started to laugh but talked to himself instead.

"Think of yourself as a plumbing system, a clock.

















As soon as you're done, you start to come undone.
It's almost interesting when you pay attention,

how working parts stop working, one by one.

So now you've asked me the oldest question of all.
You want to know how I'm doing. I told you before,
I'm dying. Been at it for years. Still, I think
I could hang a few more calendars on the door."

"He Gets Around to Answering the Old Question" by Miller Williams, from Time and the Tilting Earth. © Louisiana State University Press, 2008.