Age the Trickster

How aloof…

This maturity wearing a fox’s grin,

slipping coins into our shoes

so we limp toward wisdom thinking it’s pain.

It’s the jester in the court of time,

juggling aches and insights with hands

made of velvet and thorns.

Memories…

Such wind-tossed leaves,

not fallen but flying,

each one a map folded wrong,

yet somehow leading us forward

through the forest we though we’d left behind

so many trees of the past,

ghosts in tailored suits,

whispering directions in the language of scent and song.

Mirrors…

The Trickster’s reliant besties,

magicians reflecting cruel,

sometimes kind images,

bending light like time,

casting shadows that dance

on cheekbones once sharp as ambition.

In morning sun,

we are golden relics;

in bathroom fluorescents,

museum pieces with labels missing.

Food…

Thrives on being a spell,

a potions brewed in the belly,

avocado and turmeric whispering to the bones

like old friends,

as the green lie Kale

implores us to believe

as we pick the intrusions from between our teeth

Exercise…

The ritual wand,

a summoning of youth through sweat and breath,

as if running backward might rewind the reel just enough

to remember why we started.

Collapsing into cheat-laden pushups,

we offer ourselves to the Gods of cartilage.

To stretch not to touch our toes,

but to reach the child who once ran barefoot

toward the horizon without asking what lay beyond.

We lift weights to hoist the past onto out shoulders

and carry aliveness upwaard like a torch.

The Trickster’s ace…

Is its sleight of hand ageing hides in its wrinkled sleeve,

secretely knowing it is not to chase what was,

but to sit with it,

sipping it slowly like tea steeped in memory,

praying the youthful nectar will not go cold,

that we can continue to wear the years like a cloak

stitched from stories of lasting threads

woven lessons in fire and laughter.

Aging has the last say,

confronting the Trickster with no regrets,

only gratitude for the furnace of experience that forged

this strange alloy of tenderness and fire.  Maturity gladly wears

the scars as medals pinned to the soul’s lapel.

Creativity pushes the duplicitous entity

up against the wall,

feeling its phoenix not reborn,

but reimagined in the ash of what has been learned.

The Trickster bows,

and we applaud,

not for the illusion,

but for the truth it dared reveal.