The spry young sprinter
I once was left me behind
For good this winter
Morning on my jog,
When, my legs gone rubber, a
J. Crew catalogue
Of lithe Apollos
Blithely passed by, then vanished.
I know what follows:
Back pangs, ravaged knees,
A cruel accrual of
Mounting maladies,
And slow, then slower
Movements, till, to get the mail
Means a half hour
Lost, overborne bones
Creaking—old house in high winds—
With the speed of stones
Skipped life bounding past
And blurring into perfect
Stillness far too fast.
Velocities
Ryan Wilson
Ryan Wilson is the editor of Literary Matters and the author of The Stranger World (Measure Press, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His work appears widely in periodicals such as Birmingham Poetry Review, First Things, Five Points, the Hopkins Review, the New Criterion, the Yale Review, and Best American Poetry. He teaches at the Catholic University of America.