Muscles

Old muscles are like familiar streets. We use them all the time, without thought, without suspicion that they'll never end. These are our connection, our natural direction. If you want to track me down, it's easy. I take the same routes every day, and hardly stray. From away to home, and home to a brief away.

Old muscles are as faithful as a dog, will log miles with you, sensing your patterns before you do. Throwing a ball for you to chase, pushing aside the social clutter to make a space to think your thoughts. Even bought you time to change the cadence of your step, as, of necessity, the years are adding up.

New muscles are a wake up call, or the sound of teenagers partying in the hall. The use of new language that sounds like swearing, as you are quickly coming to the end of enduring the changes that the pace of life arranges. New muscles require new memory, just when you thought you hadn't any. Just when you felt the old aches and pains were best, new ones come to put you to the test.

I am an older life on an aging frame. Most of what I've faced I do not care to face again. If someone tells me things I need to do, I listen and think them through. I try to find the simplest way to bend my sinews to display a pliant pose. How I'll ever get from here to there, God only knows. All I say when facing some heavy weight of learning set before me, "Please, in your youth, bear the weight it for me. Humour me in this, with muscles sweet, if you adore me!"

G.M.S.

Sent from my iPhone