GUINOTTE WISE
NO LONGER JUICED WITH YOUTHINESS
Have I outlasted myself? At eighty?
No. That’s a paltry age these days.
Ferlinghetti is one hundred and writing books.
I was down at the pasture fence where
Johnnie Nichols’ cows get through, drug
four twelve-foot cow panels about a
football field length down there to
stop leaks in the old fence, broke a sweat
I’ll tell you that, good exercise, heart rate up,
I walk ten thousand steps a day, often more,
I just move slower now, no longer juiced
with youthiness (a word like truthiness that
late night smart alec says he pulled out of his
keister (like much of his material, although
truthiness was a valid word in the nineteenth
century) The two pups are full of youthiness
and celebrate my outside work by playing
yapping having fun—I have to last another
dozen years, for them, they need that daily
presence feed and treats routine, a little
praise, strokes and pats, we all need that.
And that’s the god’s truth of youthiness.
GUINOTTE WISE writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Five more books since. A 5-time Pushcart nominee, his fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review, Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com