Slow–a poem

Why do you stereotype
your future selves, the old?
Because we’re slow.
It’s true, we know it.
Our speech is slow
as we search for the word we want
or another word that would do.

We’re slow at walking
slow at pulling on our shoes
You hurry us but no
we must be slow or else
we lose our wallets
or fail to turn off the stove.

Slow is all the rage—
unless it’s our adagio
enraging you, you
who are so desperate to go
you who have been ranked from birth
on how quick you were
to crawl and walk and talk
and smile and be right.

But now you frown.
You rank us low and know
you’ll never be that slow
unless you join the crowd who now
aspire to go slow
learning from books and blogs
all about slow travel

slow cooking slow thinking
slow aging slow knowing.
Excuse me please.
Here we are
right under your nose
teaching by example
the glorious habits of slow.

You are tourists in our land.
We are the prisoners of slow.
That said,
we’d rather be quick than slow
but we’d rather be slow
than dead.

Rachel McAlpine 2019 cc by 2.0 — please share 🙂

Oh the paradox. The very quality in old people that exasperates some people is also perceived as highly desirable. We get it: taking time to relish every simple pleasure. But it didn’t come naturally.  We used to rush like you. We used to be famous for it. We had to learn to be patient and grateful and calm.

Yes, old people are slow. So will you be one day.