A collection of poems on aging, such as: I See Myself Becoming Old My closet is full of suits I don't wear anymore. Nothing I need to wear them for. There are days when I stay in my pajamas till noon. I picture my heirs looking at my wardrobe one day asking "Can you think of anyone who can use these or should we give them to Goodwill?" Or, "Would you like this tie as a remembrance of Dad?" As I read the obits of the recently deceased, which I took to doing a few years ago, I compare their ages to mine. Then there's the arthritis in my hands and feet. My left foot aches when I walk and I suffered a rupture in a time-worn tendon not long ago. I have more trouble lifting things and getting around. Don't jump over puddles anymore for fear of the damage I might do coming down. (No more kicking up heels for me.) What will it be next, the incipient cataracts? My hearing isn't what it used to be. I don't think I need a hearing aid yet, though my daughter disagrees. Or will it be something unforeseen like that ill-fated tendon? I see myself becoming old, yet it's as if I were watching it happen to somebody else.

Richard Greene is a poet, or has been at least since he retired from a 38-year career in international development. A lawyer by training, he fell into his development career by accident when, after law school, though planning not to practice law but interested in international affairs, he accepted an unsolicited job offer from the U.S. Agency for International Development. After a few years in Washington (or Foggy Bottom, as the location of the U.S. foreign policy establishment is known), he was assigned as legal advisor to the USAID mission in Laos and there discovered that the development business suited his interests and inclinations very well. Greene wrote poetry beginning in the 8th grade and continued through college where he studied with a Professor, Henry Rago, who later became editor of Poetry magazine, the leading U.S. poetry journal. However, he wrote few poems after law school as he became absorbed in international development, but turned back to poetry as he neared retirement.

I See Myself Becoming Old, On the Downhill Side, My Third Grade Playmates, Reunion, The Cookie, You Can Tell Us by Our Pecs, Planned Obsolescence, How I Know I'm Getting Old, Medicine Man, Waiting, These Hands, The Incredible Shrinking Man, In Denial, Them and Us, A Voice from the Past, Insouciance, Old Men Don't Care What They Wear, Pas de Deux, Reveille, The Girls of Summer, The Way We Were, Still the Same, Packing Up, Afternoon at the Movies, A Special Theory of Relativity, End of an Era, The World Is Dwindling, Their Jungle Gym Is Overgrown with Vines, A Cry in the Night, Judgment Day, Assisted Living, What's a Century?, 79th Birthday, Aliens, Forever Young, The Circle Closes, Running Down, It's Hard to Believe We Were Ever So Young, Long Day's Journey into Suppertime, Cantankerous, Ossuary