Letters to Myself as an Old Man

In ten years,
I’ll write five letters to myself.
No, not five letters but ten poems,
living poems that inhale and exhale
and that can have the wings of a bird
or the guts of a fish
or the teeth of a snake.
These poems will act as a memoir
of sorts for when my face has more lines
than a pitted stone;
and I will find these poems locked away in a box
lined with velvet and dust,
tucked away somewhere in an attic or
a writing desk perhaps.
The same desk where my arthritic fingers still
drum the typewriter, clacking my remaining teeth
in a sort of rhythmic beat.
These poems are letters to a version of myself
at age 72, eyelids drooped over my blue, blue eyes
like great gray parasols.

by Andrew Ketcham