It’s not the heating pad
and the NSAIDS I’ll need
after this long stroll
with Enid and Evelyn,
both past eighty, and leaning
over a wooden rail snapping pics
of the just-hatched life
we walked to the water to see.
Six baby swans paddle behind a majestic mother
leading with a long slender neck and bright orange beak
on a blue bay with boats in the background.
There are fluffy clouds in the sky
and the air is temperate, barely seventy—
that number I’m quickly approaching.
No, the worst part of being past 65
is also the best, knowing I don’t have
the leisure to sit home and wait
till next spring to coo at baby swans
with Enid and Evelyn, who’ve taught me
how to open my door and greet
each moment before it swims away.
Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press, and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications. Visit www.jacquelinejules.com