You’ll Trip If You Look Up

Old folks get cautious,

Not because they’re frail

But as a function

Of the brain’s habits,

The way memory

Preferentially

Encodes its alarms,

The startling events

That didn’t go well—

Accumulate years,

Memory’s bias

Accumulates scares,

And, to make things worse,

Yawning holes where you

Don’t know what occurred.

Long life’s like the night—

Burning reminders

In oceans of dark.