Poem, “I am Old”

I am old
In my brief certainties,
Destined to short debates
And blemished toilets,
Once brazenly clean.

I am a one-pair-of-shoes guy
With lazy underwear,
Two missing combs,
Ivy-growing nose hairs,
Mounds of pills in orange tubes,
Toe nails hard as turtle shells.

My ties are too wide.
I cough at movies.
My body slides out of chairs,
Reluctantly. My pen hesitates.
Headlines will do for today.

Television shadows invade
My bedroom.
My mind wanders
Into my father’s garden
Or into the basement
As I hear his fingers
Rattling through
His tool box.