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Ladder
You’re young,
Tower high, are the Big 1-7
and you’re going to College,
you’re invincible-- the ladder
has nowhere to go but Up and Up.
Life seems that it could be Great,
certainly Better than now, and you’ll be Independent;
the world at your finger-tips, and they quiver in Antici-
pation.
The only realization that hits you too late, hits you
A little at a time; first after your freshman year with
The newly formed wrinkles of the sleepless nights of cramming
Like trophies under your eyes, then as you graduate, the tears
Falling upon your friend’s shoulders with hopes of active address books
Walking you across the stage and out into the world, and after, landing that first
real job that wraps your excitement around your throat and squeezes until
you loosen it a little and begin the wait to jump back in to the classroom
atmosphere of grad school and finally all at once,
after the marriage and the kids, somewhere in mid-life crisis
—you realize—you weren't climbing a ladder to success
but sliding down the ladder of time and physical capability.
You have to stop, do the mental calculation
That is your life, make sure that its full
That it all equals out and that it was
Worth it, because all too soon
so quickly in fact
you’re that old lady on the cane, the skin
under your eyes slides down like mud to sit
on your cheek bones and you’re back stoops,
like you have nowhere to go but down.
As if tomorrow you’ll become the dust
of the earth, making young people cough
when the hot air fills their lungs with You.
And people open doors for you;
not because you’re pretty anymore,
or because they respect your smarts,
but because you’re fragile.
Your lily white hair indicating
you’re as brittle as an
eggshell.
Your veins begins to throb
with anger. Your cheeks flush
and damn those heart pills anyway,
because if you could only find
the extra energy to hit them
with your cane, you’d show them
who’s unstoppable--
like you used to be,
when you were the big 1-7
and didn’t notice
that the ladder
had two
ends.
