Old People

Of course I am much younger than the old

man, my neighbor, his white head and legs

uncovered as he dozes with newspaper

in the sun. His yard is perfectly trimmed;

the garden surrounding the elegant green

is the wife’s doing, a riot of blossom in May:

roses, clematis, some German shrub I can’t

name. Oh, and a lemon tree. (In winter, it lives

in the glassed-in sun-room.) The wife is old,

too, pottering with her plants all day,

bending over in her rolled-up elastic-waist

khakis and on windy days, the fleece jacket

and her light curls all jumbled. (It is not

because I am getting old that I also wear

rolled-up elastic-waist khakis and potter

around the garden, talking to the plants,

or that I find myself sitting on the sunny

patio, dozing over this notebook.)