AN OLD MAN’S ANSWERS ARE BLOWING IN THE WIND
[To be read responsively]
Young Bob: How many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned?
Old Man: Just once, if we can ban them without cannonballs.
Young Bob: How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
Old Man: The question itself is a paradox: allowed means not free.
Young Bob: How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?
Old Man: The answer is doves stand for peace
because Noah’s dove never returns.—Biblical humor.
Young Bob: How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
Old Man: Just one, once he hears with his heart.
Young Bob: How many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?
Old Man: Just once, if he can tell it from heaven.
Young Bob: How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died?
Old Man: Apparently more than six million.
The answers at my age are blowin' in the wind. The answers still blowin' in the wind. 
OLD AGE
Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.
—Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9
The Razbash asks, “Why does it read ‘an entire world’?
Why not simply ‘world’?”
When you die, everything you learned searches
for a new learner, but everything you did not learn ceases to exist for eternity.
That is why it is incumbent to learn
as much as you can, even in old age,
until your last breath.
The entire world needs you.
ON THE IMAGE OF GOD
Modern thinkers teach that the notion of God as a wise old man
with a long white beard, pulling levers all day is for children.
As we mature, we are told, our image of God correspondingly matures.
But now that I’m a wise old man, I must admit I find infinite wisdom
in children’s notion of God. Our ancestors were really onto something.
Now, give me the levers and let me loose.
WHEN WE ALL TOOK DRUGS
When we all took drugs we took them to escape
our true selves I mean into our true selves.
When we all took drugs our only problem was
others did not take drugs I mean the same drugs.
When we all took drugs we understood the horror
of needing medicine to be normal I mean to be normal.
WHAT’S THE BEST DISEASE FOR AN AGING POET?
I used to think the best disease was cancer,
because I would know not to waste time.
But then I thought of the pain and pain pills
that would poison my mind too much to concentrate.
So I thought a heart condition would do the trick,
because I wouldn’t waste energy.
But the fear of getting upset would poison my will
too much to dare something new.
Maybe arthritis? I wouldn’t waste words,
because every word would jolt my thumbs with pain.
But I don’t write in longhand anymore,
and keyboarding doesn’t hurt enough to teach concision.
So now I think the best disease is obesity.
It would make me sluggish enough to sit still.
Overeating would keep me up all night,
so I could edit, revise, and have another ice-cream sundae
while reflecting on how every calorie counts, but never counts forever.
It would also make me a better proofreader than if I had OCD,
where I would waste all night troubled that the word
daughter has two syllables, while the word son has only one.
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Zev Shanken has been literary editor of Response, A contemporary Jewish Review. His poems appear in Richard Light’s Jewish Rites of Death, Red Wheel Barrow, Brevitas Festival, and others. With Richard Siegel he developed How to be a Perfect Stranger: a Basic Guide to Religious Etiquette for Jewish Lights. A retired college and high school English teacher, Mr. Shanken lives in Teaneck, NJ with his wife, a retired clinical psychologist.
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