What happens When We Grow Old? (Kate Updegrove)

(Note: In Jennifer Semple Siegel's Introduction to Literature class, students are offered the option of writing a creative response to a poem, story, or play. Kate Updegrove chose to write a poetic response to Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem.")

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What happens when we grow old?

Does our memory shrink
like a dried up sponge?
Or create a colorful canvas ---
And then smudge.
Do we laugh the same?
Or develop a lion’s roar
With a big mane?

Maybe we don’t move
Like a sloth in the wild.

Or do we reminisce our lives as a child?

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LIT160 Introduction to Literature, Spring 2007

Published with permission.
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