You Hardly Knew Me

Behold these mother-of-pearl and off-gold 

opera glasses. I am not soprano, 

I'm not fat, and not on stage at that. 

But as for other things like flinging 

my speaking voice into the sparse cluster 

of attentively seated beings 

with an ear for answers to the questions 

Guess who's not coming to the shore this year, 

and guess who's no longer lingering 

in youth. Being old is a rough cut 

of fantasy with a dwindling level 

of tolerance for interrogative lilts 

and dropped final consonants, plus of course 

female voices that chirp or squeal, no appeal 

either for males who grunt. So if you wish 

to see what you may be missing in me.

I'm telling you in no uncertain terms

you've missed merely a crust of the secret brittle tufts.