Sonnet 83 -- The Winter of Life

sinking underneath the gray of winter

dead grass and brown leaves blooming in my yard

i’ll never be a shakespeare or a pinter

to listen to my feeble voice is hard

without a house or child i cannot speak

to those who lived a life within the norm

i am not a hippie, baby, i’m a freak

remembering my life within the dorm

my breasts are not an aerial display

i joke they are a navel maneuver

but everything i need comes my way

no longer a shaker or a mover

calling us “old” is not pejorative

we joke “consider the alternative”