Anthony

 

I once had my hair cut

By the oldest barber in the world.

The title I think was official.

He was a hundred and seven years old.

 

He didn’t own the barbershop.

He still drove himself to work.

It was easy to get an appointment;

You just asked for Anthony.

 

He was a little deaf,

But sharp as a tack.

He was full of plans for the future -

Things to invent when he had the time.

 

He died about two years later.

I only found out last year.

I had hoped he would cut my hair again,

But life gets busy,

And it’s a long way to New Windsor.

 

I’m not sure how he went exactly.

When you’re a hundred and nine

No one asks a lot of questions.

 

For him, it was all the blink of an eye.

He started cutting hair at seventeen;

When he stopped, he was dead.

His son, too, was an old man by then.

They might have passed for brothers;

At a certain point, how much older can you look?

 

It’s not a bad legacy -

Maybe a hundred thousand haircuts.

They had all grown out

By the funeral, of course -

But what lasts forever?

Nothing human, at least.