Hi friends, today's episode is hosted by the inimitable poet Shira Erlichman.

Hang tight and I'll be back on August 28th.

I'm Shira Erlichman and this is The Slowdown.

When I was 26, I taught creative writing once a week in Manhattan at Sage,

a national organization which offers advocacy and services for LGBTQIA plus elders.

I don't know what I expected exactly of that classroom,

but I didn't expect one of the most provocative, sexually explicit, and boisterous rooms I'd ever teach in.

There was Bunny, with a mop of shrieking white hair, a fiercely intelligent 70-something-year-old

who'd survived breast cancer and carried her bike all the way up the bazillion flights to our classroom.

There was Debra, who during her week of workshop fiercely advocated, it's not smut, it's erotica.

There was Dapper William, whose memoir excerpts surrounding the ethics of a childhood sexual encounter

sent the class into gay mayhem.

My grandparents died when I was fairly young, so I didn't grow up around elders, let alone queer ones.

I didn't expect that these students in their late 60s to late 80s would be so passionate, inquisitive, opinionated.

Our culture doesn't reflect elders as still growing.

I didn't expect that some of these elders would become friends, attend my dinner parties, and still be a part of my life 10 years later.

As each birthday arrives, what do we expect from our new age? It's vantage point.

Today's poem unspools a wealth of questions, both practical and existential.

I love the transparency of the speaker's effort to understand his new perch, and, too, the soft commentary that comes at the end from a compassionate and older perspective.

35th year by Sharif Shanahan.

It remains, I keep looking for a thing I can't name, though I try purpose, meaning, presence.

I circle my worst fear in life, which is my life, what to do with it, how to shape it, and so on.

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