Age Disparaged

"The body, like the oak, is bent and gnarled, The shallow-rooted mind is overthrown, When we are near the evening of the world." ---From, 'Runes for an Old Believer", by Rolfe Humphries Facebook post: "Respect your elders!" My mind may not be now as nimble as once it was, and although I might see all with jaundiced sight, not fresh, not new, my mood is mostly cool and quite calm. --- Until, that is, some brash provocateur begins to essay an attack, thinking to erase the marks my words have made and to overwrite them with his own. I care not very much that he with logic may displace my niche, nor cleverly might mock me. But to disparage Age in dotage, with vile invectives, is doltish, brutish and dumbfounding. My sweetest comfort is to have no doubt that he (nor others of his ilk) will never see how ineffectual must be this mild complaint.