Where Is The Door?

I am 63 years old
and neither can I mash potatoes
nor can I drive, if all I am told
is true. It doesn’t

look true — I cannot do
both at once but give me time
to separate the tasks from one another
and I am sure I can do

most of what what
I am asked to do.  I am 63 years old
and cannot dress myself nor can I
hold myself close and love me

as I should be loved, or as I’ve
been told I should; who knows now
what that even means? I’m 63 years old
and the list — check-boxes on soul-paper,

boxes printed in fire, the audit trail
with which I judge myself — is incomplete.
It seems, even, to be erasing itself.
What I thought I knew of living is vanishing. 

I’m 63 years old and I’ve not done nearly enough
about famine and genocides, nothing about
correcting history, not enough about the poor,
neither the belly nor the beast are more in check

because I was alive. I’m 63 years old
and it is 63 years old — weakened
in mind and matter. I cannot drive,
can’t mash potatoes, can’t hear,

have all but stopped feeling
anything other than fear and regret
and if I ever knew peace of mind,
I have forgotten what it was like. 

I have to go, and 63 years after I got here
I find I’ve forgotten how to get to the exit.
63 plodding years of the urge for going,
and where exactly is that damned door?