At this turn of fifty,
the pain isn’t figurative —
it is literal.
It’s a corporeal manifestation
of what used to be
poetic and tragic.

Youth broke hearts,
and feelings tore innards.
The joke is that the heart
still breaks —
and now it’s not just that pain:
the shoulder, the knee, the heel.

The validation of abstractions
into the concrete.
What divine irony.

Mary Carson said it best
all those years ago:
Nature is cruel.
Man, vindictive.

Age gives you wisdom —
and the price was always
pain.