Ode to Wattles by Sharon Olds

Ode to Wattles

 

I want to write about my wattles—oooo, I

lust after it,

I want to hold a mirror under my

chin so I can see the new

events in solid geometry

occurring below my jaw, which was

all bone till now, and now is jam-packed

reticule. I love to be a little

disgusting, to go as far as I can

into the thrilling unloveliness

of an elderwoman’s aging. It is like daring

time, and the ancient laws of eros,

at once. But when I look down,

into the compact’s pool, and see

my face hanging down from the bottom of my face,

like a raft woven of popsicle sticks,

my nursing-home neck,

then, though I’m willing to age and die

for there to be sex and children,

the slackness of the drapery, and the

inside-out pockets of the jowls shock me.

I thought it wouldn’t go so far with me

that I would be geology,

my throat a rippling of synclines and anticlines

back when the crust was warm, and I

was hot. Secretly, I don’t know yet

that I’m not, but I bow my head to time,

and count my withered chins, three five seven

nine, my muses, my truth which is not

beauty—my crone beauty, in its first youth.