Mellower Men
Mellower men we're becoming
my brothers and I.
Men now closer to thirty than twenty
and just coming to know it.
Now we exchange kindness
without seeming foolish
and reminiscing mostly
we talk in the past tense
as if to somehow
retard time's passage.
But, really, we're sharing the experience
of knowing we're older
and a good deal tamer
than back when kindness
was weakness and mellower men
were old.
And old was
somehow irrelavant to us.
gallagher
26 November 1973
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —