On Reaching Forty

Other acquainted years sidle with modest decorum across the scrim of toughened tears and to a stage planked with laughter boards and waxed with rueful loss. But forty with the authorized brazenness of a uniformed cop stomps no-knocking into the script bumps a funky grind on the shabby curtain of youth and delays the action. Unless you have the inborn wisdom and grace and are clever enough to die at thirty-nine.