Thinning

We age in birthdays and anniversaries, gatherings
of welcome and farewell. “You’re looking good,” we say,
despite receding hairlines, bellies rounding by the year –

too little exercise, too much time
spent in front of screens. Babies
are now children; children, amazingly, teens,

embarked on their own, mysterious journeys.
With offspring pairing up and parents fading,
we will soon be grandparents, elders,

joining Grey Power, plotting world cruises,
or clinging on bravely till a resentful State
throws spatters of coin at our needs.

Once there was a world of manual typewriters
and Gestetner stencils. We were the coming thing, and then,
the moment varying for each of us, history rolled past

and left us in its wake. There are more gatherings
ahead: phone calls, arrangements.
It will be sudden. It will be long-expected and

(we say behind our hands) really, a relief.
At the funeral home. At St Mary’s. On the short,
springy grass next to the family crypt.

Afterwards, coffee, comfort food, a few
discreet but welcome drinks, the chatter
resuming once again. The relatives

puzzled, trying to work out who we are.
“You’re looking good,” we say, the conversation
conducted in whispers, in echoes, thinning.

©  Tim Jones

~ from Men Briefly Explained, Interactive Press, 2011

Reproduced here with permission

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I originally featured Thinning on October 25, 2011 (yes, in that year), as part of celebrating the release of Tim’s third collection, Men Briefly Explained (Interactive Press.) As I observed at the time, I “like the poem’s form and also its universality—a commonality of human experience that I instantly recognised at a “gut” level. “Thinning” also made me appreciate the versatility and depth of Tim’s poetry yet again, especially when juxtaposed with other recent featured poems such as Shetland Ponies, Haast Beach, (on the Tuesday Poem Hub on August 16),  Men at Sea, and happened to meet.”
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About The Poet:

Tim Jones is a New Zealand poet, author and editor who was awarded both the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature and a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2010. His latest book, co-edited with PS Cottier, is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry (2014).

For more, see http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.