Brief History
We don't know a damn thing.
Say we can describe someone
who is eighty as old. Then a span
of eighty years, from birth to death
is one old person, a useful unit
of measurement if one wants
to consider one's place in history.
One old person ago, for example,
my grandfathers would have
discovered that the world is capable
of more than one Great War
as Hitler signed his Pact of Steel.
And perhaps they read the account
that Lou Gehrig was the luckiest man
on the face of the Earth at their kitchen
table, windows open in the heat of July.
Two old people, head to toe, or
grave to cradle, and John Brown's men
are raiding Harper's Ferry to instigate
a slave rebellion- just two old people!
And Big Ben had just begun counting
time above the Houses of Parliament.
It only takes the lives of three people
(and for me a short trip up the road)
to find Americans at war, fighting for
their independence at the Battle
of Vincennes, or in four months to see
the court martial of Benedict Arnold.
Add one more and make it four
old people and the pirate William Kidd
is captured and tried in Boston.
Five, and the first African slaves
were delivered to Jamestown, Virginia.
Six, and Henry the Eighth takes
his fourth wife (and his second Anne).
Jump to ten old people, a mere ten
human lives stretched like a shadow
behind us, and Genghis Khan and Francis
of Assisi were wreaking their separate
brands of havoc on the world.
And it takes just twenty-five completed
lives to reach the Roman Empire
and Jesus Christ....
And one only needs sixty-three
octogenarians, people similar to others
we've known, who have been born,
played games, worried over time and
food, kissed their children, taken
and given life, stooped and breathed
their last breaths in wonder or fear.
Just sixty-three people, running their
short arcs, their allotted legs
in our human relay. Sixty-three.
Hardly enough to fill a room.
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