REFLECTIONS ON A NUDIST BEACH

This is a sunny, enlightened time. The surf’s a song. The sun singes.
Childhood skin burns now precancerous, best to biopsy. I’d interrogate
my weight & wobble, but my knees & hips have betrayed me.

A fanny pack of prescription drugs & happy hour cocktails of multivitamins,
probiotics, & gummies to relax is all the rage. I use to be skinny but added
a stone’s heft with each baby’s birth. My man boobs are no longer penny-flat,

but Botox tightens baggy sags. A hat covers a tonsure; chin wattle’s
bearded. To camouflage is human. Flomax helps pee, Melatonin sleep.
I’m forgetting something, pre-dementia. The roto-rooter to stent arteries

opens questions of mortality & the blues. To reach an age in life & shrink,
is unfair. & if not virile, there’s pills for erectile tomfoolery. I’m talking about
that other guy, the Alpha hunk of masculinity, the naked porcine ass

peacocking on the beach while I, a walking miracle of medical science,
flaunt my whitening-striped teeth, most of the time wearing pants.