what hurts most (a poem)

what hurts most

about growing old are not the aches

as naggingly sharp as they are

or the loss of energy through the day

or the slipping memory of a moment

and the blunt nostalgia when

memory doesn't fail

what hurts most is the neglect

the existential clarity

of being irrelevant

like a man waiting for a bus

that never arrives

and would go nowhere if it did

--Charles Deemer