Soapbox

Nuclear Winter

Last night I watched "The Lion in Winter"
Kate Hepburn in all her glory-
and contemplated the changes of season that come upon us all.
I know that I have been fortunate.
While there is no almanac to predict the weather still ahead,
no sudden squalls or early, bitter snows
have rushed the perpetual forward progression of my life's season.
For me there is a gradual dimming and loss
like the slow, sweet leeching away of light on a long summer's twilight,
casting long, violet shadows on knees and elbows,
on the stamina to run up and down stairs all day
or to function coherently with only a few hours' sleep.
 

My attitude towards all this is somewhat sardonic.
it sometimes feels as if my body,
trusted friend and companion low these many years,
the one I have counted on to "have my back", so to speak,
has been unmasked as a traitor, a double agent all along,
secretly working for the other side.
Evidence of my own duplicity is everywhere:
once keen eyesight betrayed to the enemy,
firm skin and graceful hands sold out for thinning hair and odd brown spots.

But in my hopefully middle years the changes I can see and feel-
creaking joints and slowing reflexes,
and even the bleak, unexpected funerals that remind me
of the mortality of my once-immortal youth
are not the ultimate perfidy.
Nor is it concern over internal changes perhaps just not yet evident-
a rebellious heart  or the insurgency of quiet malignancy
that makes one fear alien invasion
and wish we could seal the borders and burn the bridges.

It is the looming spectre of frailty,
of feebleness and confusion, a coup d'etat over grace and reason
that lurk in the dark closets of all our minds,
waking us in the night (along with that shrinking bladder)
and we are reminded:  what use to pull in the drawbridge
when the enemy could be already within the walls?
You realize that if your most private secrets,
the nuclear launch-codes of self
are betrayed, compromised by your own body without knowledge or consent,
by the time you realize what has happened
the sequence will have been initiated, fail-safes bypassed
and that substance drifting down around you
will not be the expected December snows
but the ash of nuclear winter.

I want to sail majestically into my winter, like Katharine Hepburn,
and carry my wrinkles and spots and myriad small self-betrayals
bravely into the sunset, head gently shaking but spirit undimmed,
the essential glory of my self uncompromised.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an aging back
and the change in weather it foretells.
For the only way to guard against life's betrayal
is not to live at all.