Early Onset

The solstice passed in silence—
a line crossed without ceremony.
Summer, that theorem of plenitude,
diminishes by a fraction each dusk.

The leaves will perform their descent
like cashmere-clad bankers
leaving the office. Not tragic,
but terminal.

I am not old,
but I have entered the awareness
of decline. Thirty-nine—
the decade without metaphor.

Autumn becomes
a notation of aging:
not death,
which is clean, absolute,
but the preface to disappearance.

My parents refused this passage—
they vanished at the crescendo.
They left me no diagram
for the long humiliation.

What is there in old age
but observation and waiting?
Not wisdom. Not grace.
Just corridors.
And soft chairs facing windows
that do not open.

I have thought of escape—
travel, reinvention, light
clarified by distance.
But every elsewhere contains
its own October.

This is the season of knowledge,
when even the sun
moves in measured retreat.
It does not mourn.
It simply recedes.