‘Sixty is the new forty!’

 – Doctors office fashion magazine headline, 2019

I just turned sixty.
Years of age
not degrees on a sextant
though in my rudderless state

charting a one-eighty
through late middle-age
trying to find a job
befitting my experience
multiple talents
ability to move, mold, lead
others to successful
outcomes

Sixty is the new forty what?
Forty winks?
Forty lashes?
Forty days and forty nights?

Dubious are those that
would employ me
that my thinking, attitudes
skill-sets would have me
out-of-synch with
younger-than-me-peers

Though I am appreciative to
those that simply
ask the question
I am equally as perturbed at
those who vacillate

implying Paleozoic values
intoning as perverse mantra
millennials and youthful as
though a bottle of
five-buck-chuck offers
similar value to differentiation
by vintage, what it goes
best with

There is no dust on
this bottle
but there will be in my wake
as I head for the door with
an I’ll-stop-you-right-there
‘thanks, but no thanks.’

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2019
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