Growing Older By Design

Dr. Maya Angelou, former Poet Laureate of the United States, pens a poem honoring the 50th Anniversary of AARP

When you see me

Sitting quietly like a sack

Left on a shelf

Don't think I need

Your chattering

I'm listening to myself.

At first the seasons arrive

Slowly dragging themselves

Over our wishes for a hasty departure

Ebbing slowly, staying, hovering

Above our lives

Like heavy clouds

Each threatening to remain

Past its appointed time

Giving way, grudgingly

To another year

Which promises to be even

Slower, more tedious

"Wait two months

Until summer"

Two whole months?

Then summer

Will never come

"Wait two months

Until Christmas"

Two whole months?

Then Christmas

Will never come

Childhood lasts a lifetime

Hear it dragging its drum

Across the floor

Then there is a subtle increase

In the march

We welcome the acceleration

We snap our fingersAnd match the tempo,

We are in joint,

This is our time,

Our muscles and bones

Our eyes and skin

Are at last one with

The space we are living in

The heart's steady hum

Quickly changes again

The tempo speeds ahead

Our efforts are vain

To slow down the train

Of life's racing ways

Taking our youth

And shortening our days

They remember our bright plumage

Now thinning and grey

Youth wags its heads

Sadly saying

We have had our day

When you see me walking slowly

And my feet won't find the stair

I will only ask one favor

Don't bring me a rocking chair

The pace has heightened again

And the blood slowsIn our veins

Slackened by age

We may stumble

And fumble and fall

We exchanged our place with time

For it races like light

Down a darkened hall

Please stop

Do not pity me

Please hold your sympathy

Understanding if you've got it

Otherwise I will do without it

When you see me moving slower

Don't study and get it wrong

Tired does not mean lazy

And each good bye is not gone

I am the same person

I was back then

A little less hair

A little less chin

Some less lung

And much less wind

I count myself lucky

I can still breathe in.

Hold, stop.

Don't pity me.