How To Be An Aging Poet

This voice is getting old
as are the lungs that drive it.

I want it to come alive with roses
firing from my tongue and 
seem to spit nothing
but autumn leaves. 

Do you feel any softness
or new growth 
in anything I say?
In fact, I’m likely reaching a point

of speaking nothing but stone talk.
I don’t know yet
if these will be sling stones shaped
to fly at Goliath, or gravestones seeking
a hole to mark, newly-turned earth
in which to settle.

I’m resigned to how little
those who follow
may be able to do with what
I am beginning to say. Not like
I’ll be offering obvious
building blocks,

nothing shaped like
a foundation. I feel already

they’ll sit there in front of you
and look like obstacles or
late-life mistakes.

Maybe that’s all I’ll be 
soon: 

object lesson on overstaying
time. Ossified while longing
to still be fluid. 

Monumental.

Waiting to crumble.