The Fine Art Of Graying Poem by A. Jayaprakash Jayaprakash Panicker

The fine-art of graying

How hard it is for us all to be
Aware that we are getting gray?
How hard would that truth be
For those who have had all gray?

The most visible is made invisible
And people go younger and agile.
Right over us all is written boldly
That we are as old as we really are.

The aged and lonely are in no way
So aged or lonely per se, for, say,
The rest of the world is a void,
Unless we take us to our lineages.

The world has shifted backward so far
And it just felt it right, ‘the aged need care’.
Maybe true, but it is the other way round
That our elderly need to care for us.

Our very ethos lies in their welfare
And we find our roots spread by them.
They are the hold; they are the trunks
The luster of life flourishes upon them.

The seed, which falls afar, flourishes freely
And the one that gets grown around the tree
Enjoys the company of a hundred trees.
It is the old that care for the younger ones.

The evening of life is but a new beginning.
We begin to know what life had held for us.
And as our days march to their final legs
We recognize ‘graying is harder than living’.

Jayaprakash Jayaprakash Panicker