There they are, up on the internet, along with
the great medical research, the ubiquitous porn,
the ads for millions of businesses, and the last-minute flights ... all those aging gags:

You know you're getting old when your sweetie says, "Let's go upstairs and make love," and you answer, "Honey, I can't do both!"

You are cautioned to slow down by the doctor instead of by the police.

You have too much room in the house and not enough room in the medicine cabinet.

An "all nighter" means not getting up to pee.

Getting depressed? You ain't read nothing yet. Another website offers THEN and NOW:

Then: The Grateful Dead.
Now: Dr. Kevorkian.
Then: Killer weed.
Now: Weed killer.
Then: Long hair.
Now: Longing for hair.
Then: The perfect high.
Now: The perfect high-yield mutual fund.
Then: Swallowing acid.
Now: Swallowing antacid.
Then: Trying to look like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.
Now: Trying not to look like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.
Then: Hoping for a BMW.
Now: Hoping for a BM.

Some of that stuff is pretty funny, alright. But a lot of it is pretty painful, especially
when you -- you handsome, virile Canadian male, you -- observe the increase in the hair
clogging your comb each morning, find the jog around the block or up a flight of stairs more exhausting than it used to be, look into the mirror after a shower and notice "love handles" forming around your waist and a road map of wrinkles around your eyes that
you could just swear weren't there, the last time you looked.

"These are all just ageist jokes, and as dangerous as anti-female sexist ones," complains
P. J. Wade, a Toronto-based strategist, futurist, lecturer and author. "When it comes to aging, retirement, seniors, we have to fight all these destructive stereotypes: the uselessness of age, the lack of purpose, inevitable physical and mental decay," she protests. "These stereotypes, these myths, really, hold people back - particularly men. And especially in their early years -- their 20s, 30s, 40s. So, rather than think about the future of their health and finances, they shut the door. As Louis Pasteur once wrote, `Chance favors the informed mind."'


MEN NOW GETTING A TASTE OF WHAT WOMEN KNOW ONLY TOO WELL

Note what Ms. Wade almost tossed off as an aside: particularly men. Now, we don't usually think of men as being very deprived in the world, do we? We guys make far more money and have traditionally had many more advantages on this planet, and we sure as heck don't have to look gorgeous all the time: Peter Mansbridge can go bald on CBC-TV and Mike Duffy can get fat on CTV, but how often have you ever spotted a nonblonde or a non-babe on a Canadian or American network? Don't hold your breath until you do. Or maybe we should, if only to hold our tummies in: men don't appear to be willing to grow old gracefully any more. "The post-World War-II-born boomers are the fastest-growing group of men seeking cosmetic surgery," declares Dr. Stephen Mulholland, a plastic surgeon based in Toronto. "They created jogging, the tennis club, the cult of youth and vitality. And now they're finding that genetics are not allowing them to maintain that edge."

Echoes Dr. Harrison Pope Jr., a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and
co-author of The Adonis Complex, "Men are now beginning to get a taste of the same medicine that women have had to put up with for decades -- namely, seeing pictures of unattainably perfect bodies in the media." Well, maybe Mansbridge and Duffy are up there on the little screen in Canada, but we guys still have to deal with Brad and Leonardo on the big screens, right around the world and even down the block at the local multiplex or video store. Getting into shape, "is an emulation of the higher social classes," Dr. Paul Garfinkel of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto suggests. "Some relates to extreme health consciousness, some to a desire to control, some to a narcissistic preoccupation with youth and appearance." A lot of this pressure, he adds, "has to do with media and advertising -- the notion that appearance is the self. The world has become much
more superficial."

So how do we confront these ageist jokes, these stereotypes, these myths, about
aging -- the same garbage we men have been inflicting (and still inflict) on the women we purportedly love, for the past few millennia? Let's do it step-by-step, and see what we can learn about "Canadian Men and Aging." (Read it slowly. You don't want to trip over your special glasses, since you can't remember where you left them, anyway).


WHEN IT COMES TO AGING, BEING A MAN ISN'T EVEN AN ADVANTAGE

..........................So appreciate your vigor in the days of your youth, before those days
..........................of sorrow come and those years arrive of which you will say, "I have
..........................no pleasure in them"; before sun and light and moon and stars grow
..........................dark, and the clouds come back again after the rain...
.........................................................................................................................-- Ecclesiastes

Oh, sure, there's lots and lots of "good news," as the Bible likes to say: "In terms of living longer, there has never been a better time to be born than the present, writes Dr. David Williams in his recent book Body Story (based on the hit British TV series of the same name). "Despite all the damage we inflict on our environment and each other, our chances of living into old age are improving all the time." Indeed, as countless books joyously point out, the average life expectancy for a European during the time of the Roman Empire was 20 years. (Don't forget, the vast majority of children died in their infancy two millennia ago, which brought down that "average" rather dramatically. There were many men and women who lived into their 40s and 50s and even beyond.)

By the end of the first millennium, that average had risen to about 30. By the mid-19th century -- the lifetime of your great-grandparents or great-great grandparents, and not really so long ago -- one could expect to live for 39 years. Just before the start of World War I -- which killed off tens of millions of men, primarily, across Europe -- the average mortality of the male was 46. By the start of the Great Depression in 1930, it was 55.

Today, in Canada, it's about 79 for men and mid-80s for women.

Why the discrepancy between the sexes? "We're biologically inferior!" chuckles Darryl Leach, an actuary dealing in the healthcare area for the giant Towers Perrin firm. Actuaries, of course, are those dynamic professionals who evaluate risk by using statistical and economic models, so they can help insurance companies charge those with outdoor plumbing more for their life insurance than those with indoor plumbing.

Alas, Mr. Leach is right: one of the most talked-about articles on this question was
published by the Society of Actuaries in their journal in February of 2001, written by Barbara Blatt Kalben. It is the most exhaustive and comprehensive study to date on the differences in mortality between the sexes and the stats are stunning. Here are some highlights from that extraordinarily influential study for your edification, and to wave in front of your girlfriend/wife/partner when she next gets on your nerves. Hell, she'd better love you while she can:

-- The pervasiveness of greater male mortality is found virtually around the world, at all ages and even before birth, and as far back as the 1300s.

-- United Nations Population Fund 1998 figures show that life expectancy at birth is higher for females than males in 154 countries, with only Nepal showing the opposite trend. (Now you know what country to live in, if you want the cheapest life insurance.)

-- National Center for Health Statistics for 1998 show that of 72 selected causes of death, females have a higher mortality rate from only six of them: breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease, asthma, rheumatic fever, pregnancy/childbirth and kidney infections.

Ms. Kalben's review of mortality extended beyond men and even into such non-human species as nematodes, crustaceans, mollusks, insects, spiders, reptiles, fish, and primates. In every single case, the female lived longer than the male.

The villain behind all of this is that thing which most of us count on for both road rage
and great erections: testosterone. It promotes higher blood pressure and suppresses the effectiveness of the immune system. So, men die younger from heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, infections and diabetes. Then, there are the accidents, suicide, and homicide, all of which strike down men in greater numbers than the softer, rounder, smarter sex. Testosterone also causes males to engage in risky behavior, from illegal drug use to alcohol abuse to, yes, unsafe driving, all of them far more prominent among men than women. "Many have concluded that the male is the weaker or frailer of the sexes:' declares Ms. Kalben, hinting that she is one of those who agree.

The good news in all this? Well, the primarily male hormone testosterone does indeed play havoc biologically and behaviorally with men's bodies, but studies of castrated men, whose bodies have obviously stopped producing testosterone, lived 10 years longer than the male norm. (No thanks. I gave at the office.) Oh, yeah -- and as if to rub it in a bit more -- the primarily female hormone of estrogen, on the other hand/uterus, tends to protect the female heart from rapid aging!

Calm down, fellow testosterone-producers, and take your hands away from there for a moment. If Freud's famous "biology is destiny" quote -- usually used to describe the anguish of being born female -- can be used in this case, it need not be a death sentence for the male sex, but merely a warning of slightly-shorter lives and higher life insurance rates. "There are mortality tables for everything, and you'll die when you die!" jokes Met Norton, chairman of the Actuary Public Relations Committee, who works on pension plans and benefit programs in Toronto for Aon Consulting Inc. "You don't die a piece at a time, but all at once, and the older you are, the more likely you will have a heart attack or be diagnosed with cancer. In fact, anything that happens to your body increases geometrically with age."

Huh? "It's the way actuarial science works," continues Norton. "If your probability of dying at the age of 40 is, say, one in 1,000, that will double every seven years. So, seven years later, when you're 47, your probability of death will be one in 500. The mortality curve is remarkably close to that magical seven-year number."

How to make that "magical number" less frightening? Well, your partner/lover/wife may
not be a widow as long as she may have feared or hoped: "The longevity of the Canadian male is going up much faster than the Canadian female," points out associate Professor of sociology at York University, Dr. Leo Davids. "Women are doing worse in their health habits, while men are doing better. The women are taking up smoking and other stupid, unhealthy things, while men are simply taking better care of themselves, so that universal gap in life expectancy is getting smaller, especially in North America."

Dr. Davids goes on to underline what has been known for years: That living with someone else -- same sex or opposite sex is not the point -- makes a big difference. "One of the major things is whether one has a partner. People who are single tend to get slack, regarding their own health. We eat better and are more cheerful when two people are involved with our health. Study after study shows that married men have better survival rates." Actuary Darryl Leach of Towers Perrin puts it almost comically: "We just had a party at our office where we congratulated a colleague for getting married, because his life expectancy has just gone up!"

Cute. But how are we going to live those increasing years?


IT'S NOT HOW - OR WHEN - WE DIE... ULTIMATELY IT'S HOW WE LIVE

I'm interested in geriatrics because I'm going to be old someday, too.
-- Canadian medical missionary, Robert McClure, born in 1900, who lived into his 90s

While there's snow on the roof, it doesn't mean the fire has gone out in the furnace.
-- John G. Diefenbaker, former prime minister of Canada, on the day before he turned 80

The photographer who had been photographing Winston Churchill on his 80th birthday said courteously that he hoped he would photograph him on his 100th.
"I don't see why not, young man," said the longtime prime minister of England.
"You look reasonably fit to me."
-- From The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes

We know many things about Canadian men and aging. For one thing, there are more older men alive now than ever before in history, so we ain't doing that bad. "So it seems that older people are staying healthier longer than they used to," writes professor of economics at the University of Toronto, David Foot, in his wildly-successful book Boom, Bust & Echo 2000. Yet, "North American society is not dominated by old people at the millennium," he insists in his book.

In person, professor Foot clarifies his demographic-based opinion. "Society is indeed aging. Boomers -- those born in 1947 -- were 44 ten years ago. Today, they are 54, and certainly worried about aging. Yet men still largely think they are invulnerable. Now, they get worried about their skin, and we see 50% of all moisturizers are for men! They want straighter teeth, laser surgery for their eyes. And they can finally afford this! So, Canadian men are spending a lot more on body-care products."

Maybe those are the companies we should put our technology-battered portfolios into.
After all, as Foot declares in his latest bestseller, "The first boomers won't turn 65 until 2012." And even then, only 22% of the Canadian population will be seniors. Today, it's more like 12%. We are hardly a nation of codgers, nor will we ever be.

Yet there is so much that we don't know about Canadian men and aging. Professor David
Gregory, the dean of the faculty of nursing at the University of Manitoba, is troubled by this fact. "We need to know much more about the aging experience in men in this country," he admits with some chagrin. "Women have traditionally survived longer, so we have studied their aging more, whereas men have been neglected in that regard."

And not only physiologically, adds Dr. Gregory. "We need to understand the psychological aspects of aging in men! What is our knowledge of aging immigrants to Canada? Of minorities? Of gay men? Of aboriginal men? We have lost any commitment to understand the aging experience, and it is incumbent upon us to study that process."

Not that us big, hairy beasts have been totally ignored. Just punch in the website of the University of Western Ontario in London, and you can read the remarkable research going on in Canada, and the excellent work of the Canadian Center for Activity and Aging (CCAA). One could fill this entire issue of Menz with the scholarly research on Canadian men and aging over the past two or three years:

-- Marsh, Paterson, Govindasamy and Cunningham's study of "Anaerobic power
of the arms and legs of younger and older men," in Experimental Physiology in 1999.

-- Roos, Rice, Connelly and Vandervoort's scholarship on "quadriceps muscle strength and contractile properties in young and older men" in the Muscle & Nerve journal in 1999.

-- Moy, Bell, Cunningham, Kowalchuk, Taylor and Paterson's look at the "mean blood velocity and oxygen uptake kinetics during the on-transient of knee extension exercise in younger and older men" in Medical Science Sports & Exercise in 1999.

-- Paroo and Noble's "Estrogen attenuates HSP72 induction in acutely exercised male rodents" in The Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology in 1998. (Let those female rodents worry about their own problems).

Oh, in some things, we may know too much (if we don't want to die of worrying). Scholars inform us that, "by the time you reach 45, your brain is losing 50,000 cells a day from the cerebral cortex, the part where `smart' lives." (The Complete Book of Men's Health). "After the age of 30, our skin gets thinner." By one's late 80s, a man's lungs have lost 15% of the delicate surface which absorbs oxygen into his blood, and their normally elastic walls have stiffened. Since the age of 50, most men have been farsighted. From the age of 30 we become increasingly deaf. (Body Story).

Of course, there's always the sweet news provided by Dr. Peter Dorsen, M.D. in his
Dr. D's Handbook for Men Over 40. "If you're in this crowd, your risks begin to shift toward such factors as arteriosclerosis (arteriosclerotic plaques causing coronary artery narrowing) and away from such congenital malfunctions that could pose risks to the under-40 set. This is especially true if you happen to have certain risk factors such as parents with a family history of heart disease, or if you have high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, or if you've smoked in the past 10 years."

But I'm being unfair, because if every adult Canadian man is intelligent and thinks ahead (whether about his finances or about his health), he can make his "last" 20, 30, even 80 years on this earth filled with pleasure. Dr. Dorsen puts it well in his aptly-named chapter, "The Fear of Growing Older":

..........................The bottom line is this: There are two sides to the physical changes
..........................of aging. The first is that some of these changes are going to happen
..........................no matter what you do. The second is that just because you are aging
..........................and changing, there's no reason why it has to make you miserable. The
..........................one mistake you really want to avoid is avoidance itself. Denying obvious
..........................symptoms, or failing to inform yourself about what's really happening to
..........................your body, will only make you prey to all the misinformation and myths
..........................surrounding the male aging process. Further, it will rob you of the
..........................opportunity of taking those steps that can blunt the sting of aging
..........................and add joy and happiness to the rest of your life.


HOW TO ACHIEVE JOY AND HAPPINESS AS WE AGE

Studies have shown that an 80-year-old who leads an optimally active lifestyle can have the same functioning and energy capacity as a 40-year-old who is sedentary.
-- Dr. William Orban, the physiologist, who created the Canadian 5BX exercise program for troops in World War II

Forty is the old age of youth. Fifty is the youth of old age.
-- Ancient French proverb

To truly confront our (naturally, normally) aging bodies, we Canadian men need far more than this magazine article. Probably the best single book this journalist has come across is the bestselling paperback by Vancouver's "media doctor," Art Hister, M.D. It's called Midlife Man. It's a delight: funny, entertaining, oozing Canadian consciousness, and overflowing with good advice and wise counsel. The subtitle captures its tone well: "A
not-so-threatening guide to health and sex for man at his peak."

"Men must take more control of their health," Dr. Hister tells us over the phone from
British Columbia. "The key idea behind my book is that lifestyle matters a helluva lot.
Do everything in moderation and you'll be okay."

Dr. Hister lays out pretty well everything we have to know, and here are some highlights: While women are constantly reminded of their "oh-so-changeable bodies" thanks to their menstrual cycles, pregnancies and more, "a typically clueless and average man can swing along from the time he starts to shave until the time he is getting up twice a night to pee and never notice a change in how his body functions." So, most men simply ignore the clues and then panic.

On a positive note, Dr. Hister quotes research that, "very few men go through a midlife crisis. On the contrary, midlife is a balanced and even tame time for most men."You may be shocked -- but pleased -- to hear that only about one man in 20 emotionally and physically crumbles in his middle years, going crazy, running after their teenaged
daughter's classmates, quitting work, you know, the American Beauty syndrome.
Perhaps most pleasant of all -- and we all know that numbers never lie -- our own Statistics Canada took surveys in both 1978 and 1991, and found that men (and women, too) between the ages of 45 and 64 were most likely of all the demographic groups to claim a "high level of psychological well-being." So why worry?


AN EPIDEMIC OF SLEEPING DISORDERS

Well, there can be lots to worry about. Let's look at just two things of which most of us guys are exceedingly fond: sleep and sex. For the former, we turn to Dr. Jeffrey J. Lipsitz, M.D., who runs the aptly-named Sleep Disorders Center of Metropolitan Toronto. His opening words are so funny, one could laugh out loud, if we weren't yawning so much: "The bad news is, we begin to show sleep problems from the age of six on. By that I mean, you fall asleep no matter how noisy it is, and sleep soundly right through the night, and then leap out of bed filled with boundless energy at the age of five -- and it's downhill from there!"

Sure is nice to know that we peaked in our sleeping skills in kindergarten. That's kind of like Joe Clark becoming prime minister at 39 and then ... but it's only natural that our sleeping patterns will change, adds Dr. Lipsitz: "Just as we have come to expect that with age, there will be an unavoidable deterioration of hip and knee joints, heart and brain functions, and reproductive organs, so too we must expect some decline in efficient functioning in the internal clock which regulates our sleep and wakefulness, the functioning of our gastrointestinal tract, and more! And these all start to give out at older times in our lives."

Fair enough. But some of the Stats-Can research can be daunting, such as a recent study of Canadian Air Traffic Controllers who were working rotating shifts: it was discovered that there was serious evidence of "age-related difficulties in adapting to constantly-changing sleep work schedules" in men who were as young 30. "We used to think that our internal clocks ted to deteriorate in our 70s," comments Dr. Lipsitz, "but then we saw these studies a few years ago in shift workers which suggested problems as early as the 50s. And now we have these recent lies proving age-related deterioration in sleepers in their 30s."

So, is it helpful to know that "practically every man over the age of 50 has trouble falling asleep, or staying asleep, or has restless-leg syndrome, or snores, or has sleep apnea (which has you stop breathing many hundreds of times a night, which can lead to high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes and early death), or some combination of the above," to quote the good doctor? "There is an epidemic of sleep disorders, and research suggests that these are hugely prevalent problems which are not adequately addressed." Here's one good reason to address them: sleepy drivers cause over 200,000 car crashes across North America each year.

Punch line? Some 24% of all older men in Canada suffer from insomnia, to which Dr. Lipsitz asks rhetorically, "How many medical conditions are there that affect fully one-quarter of all men over the age of 65?" The answer is clear, at least to the sleep disorders expert: "We have to make sleep a priority! Work safety and quality of life will suffer if we sacrifice our sleep -- at any age."


SEXUAL PERFORMANCE

Okay, okay, enough about sleep problems. How about that wonderful activity that most
of us prefer to do instead of sleep, even if we still tend to use the expression, "I'm sleeping with that woman"?

Sex, as we all know so well -- even as Canadian men -- can be glorious. Indeed, in our teens, it probably ranked Numero Uno in our thoughts and emotions, even if rarely in our actions. But we also know that that thing between our legs doesn't always work the way we expect, want or long for, which is why the word "Viagra" has become one of the biggest punch lines of the past decade. (This writer's personal favorites: Did you hear
about the guy who swallowed two dozen Viagra pills by mistake? They couldn't
close the coffin.)

When it comes to "Sex and the Canadian Male," who better to interview than Jody Bresgi, director of marketing and public relations for Canadian Men's Clinic Limited, which has seen over 20,000 Canadian men since 1997 in its four clinics across the country (one in Richmond, BC, near Vancouver, one in Ottawa, and two in Toronto ... so now you know for sure where the men with the most sex problems live).

"What we've found -- and most surprising -- is that sexual dysfunction occurs at any age. Of course, it's more common with aging men, but we find that we have as many patients in their 30s as in their 60s." One must keep in mind that the Canadian Men's Clinics treat premature ejaculation (P.E.) as well as erectile dysfunction (E.D.).

So you may be taken somewhat aback to hear that the ages of their patients range from 18 to over 90, and even more so to hear from Ms. Bresgi that, "it's also surprising how many younger men we treat with E.D., since most would assume that the vast majority with that condition would be older." Indeed. Still, the bulk of Canadian men who seek help with E.D. are between the ages of 40 and 60. (Have you seen those terrifying commercials on TV? "One in three men have erectile dysfunction," the voice drones. "Most suffer in silence." Oy!)

There are other problems as well. Low sex drive. Lower energy levels and "less zest for life, all of which "can kick in, in the early 30s." No wonder the most common question heard from their many thousands of patients across Canada is "Aren't I too young for this to be happening to me?" To be fair to us Canadian men -- and Lord knows we all need a bit of fairness now and then -- is the fact that one of the major side effects of SSRIs (those fabulous new wonder drugs which boost our serotonin levels and get us out of depressive states -- including Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft) is low sex drive. (This writer has a psychiatrist friend who loves to call Zoloft "Noloft").

Is there any optimistic news to be heard from Ms. Bresgi of Canadian Men's Clinic Limited. Well, yes: the majority of costs are covered by provincial healthcare plans, after a "private fee of $285," and it sounds as if it's worth every penny. Especially when you hear success stories such as this one: "A man came in to one of our clinics suffering from low
sex drive, with his head down. His marriage was on the rocks and he was in despair. We quickly discovered that he had low testosterone levels, and began to treat him. Just one month later, he quit his job, started his own successful business, and his marriage became wonderful again." (I once bought a tube of toothpaste, which had promised me that. And you needn't remind me that we described, above, what testosterone does to the male body on the negative side.)

Trouble sleeping. Bad (or non-existent) sex. Is this what we have waiting for us as we age? Not necessarily. Dr. Rachel Schlesinger, an associate professor of social science at York University who teaches in gerontology, declares, "There are all these myths, that men who are so virile and so handsome, suddenly fall apart and are helpless. They're simply not true!" Echoes her husband, Dr. Ben Schlesinger, a professor emeritus in the faculty of social work at the University of Toronto, "We must realize that life does slow us down,
and frustration can come on as we realize that we are not 30 or 40 anymore, but 65.
We simply have to accept that our bodies and mind may be aging, and our ways of life
may be shifting."


THE ROLE OF RETIREMENT

One crucial example of that "shift" is retirement, according to the male Dr. Schlesinger. "That's one of the most difficult issues that we have to face, and many men take early retirement, not realizing that the average Canadian male lives to the age of 78 -- and that number increases constantly. So, we should all be preparing to deal with all that retirement time facing us at a much younger age: hobbies, travel and lectures. And we must remember that you can't travel 365 days a year, or go fishing every single day."

One powerful example Dr. Schlesinger gives is the Canadian group that sends retired professionals overseas, who then use their lifelong skills and knowledge to assist people in Third World countries. "When a man retires, his entire status changes: who calls, who asks for help, no key to the washroom, no secretaries at your beck and call. They quickly lack the routine and respect that work gives a person. Retirement, like widowhood, is a role-less role!"

Futurist P.J. Wade looks upon retirement in a similar fashion: "Men should be seeking out additional education early in their lives, and not merely for their jobs, but to accomplish other things for later in life, and build up other aspects of their personality: music, sports, writing, woodworking - all of which will keep their brains active. So, even if some of their employment is not fulfilling, they still have other activities. Men must learn to play with their brains, not merely with their balls." (Yes, she actually said that.)

Then, Ms. Wade really gets going: "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a man believes that he will fall apart with age, he will. It's not chemical! If you look after your body and get into the best shape possible, you'll be fine. Yes, bodies will change, but it's not inevitable that you'll lose your teeth and your sex drive. It's all up to you. And people talk of the elderly
as if they are dotty, but only five to six percent of the population ever suffers cognitive
loss, and less than one in ten Canadians over the age of 65 lives in an institution."

Who, then, should have the last word? How about the brilliant Canadian poet Christopher Dewdney, who turns 50 this year, whose words recall some of our scholars and authors, and, like all creative writers, moves beyond. "The biggest barrier to being vital is our preconceptions about growing old," he declares over his cell phone. "We are all flooded with societal beliefs and timetables. So we often fit ourselves into slots that are not appropriate for our actual age, and many men often make the mistake of imposing that chronology on themselves. Look up my `Poem Begun With a Line From a Dream' from
my 1994 collection Demon Pond, and you'll see what I mean."

I go downstairs into my library, and actually find the slim volume, and there it is, on page four:

You are not so old
that you cannot lie naked
in the autumn leaves...
In my mind the leaves
have already opened.