Quiet Expectations (Poetry)

On a patch of poppied wasteland — a small wilderness, serene,
weed-planted in profusion, a kaleidoscope of green
and red and white and yellow — they built a sheltered home,
a refuge for the old folks when they’d reached the twilight zone.

It looked more like a dolls house with its blue and lemon paint,
and its modern architecture the antithesis of quaint,
but the residents, we reasoned, would no doubt be the kind
that valued peace and quiet and a tranquil state of mind.

We imagined tweedy majors, mustachioed and grey,
and a modest host of spinsters, discreetly tucked away
with frail, forgetful widows who would creep about the place
country-mouse-like in their habits, wearing lavender and lace.

The invasion of the crumblies was a calm, demure affair,
unobtrusively effected, hardly stirring the hushed air,
so we became a touch complacent in the soporific lull
which followed — left us thinking that retirement must be dull.

Big surprise — we were not ready for the party that they threw,
the PA booming loudly and the music scything through
our quiet suburban backwoods, and it wasn’t Frank or Bing
but Puff Daddy and the Spice Girls who made their rafters ring.

Not for them the gradual fading into geriatric gloom
like shadows that slow-shuffle through the dusk’s cool waiting room,
instead, it’s karaoke — a defiant, noisy fling,
ere the final strains of silence mark the end of everything.