We have lived half a century
 

Generation X is dead.
—William Gibson

​

What will we be like when we are old?
Will our hair resemble the wild geriatric wigs
of dandelions gone to seed?
Will crushed tissues peek from our sleeves
like desiccated prom corsages?
Will our days be compartmented
as pills we fish from plastic organizers?
Perhaps we’ll startle at the tiny craters
of our bewildered eyes in mirrors.

We don’t know what will surprise us
most. Even as old newspaper stacks
grow more Smithsonian daily
in our attics—a dead bee atop one pile
like a dispossessed apostrophe.
Even as winter dusk
presses tusks of dull blue
against the west-facing windows.
In the television light,
we are ghosts on the sofa,
turning the voices up to shouting
to catch the scripted words of lovers,
killers, all our new friends.
We hunker under afghans
while arthritis hauls an arctic wind
through our wrists. In these days
of no station signoff, we dwell
in electronic light everlasting.