I won't claim, like many do, that this thing called aging sneaked up on me. After all, I have been growing older for quite some time. On the other hand, it wasn't until I came to realize that the whole process would end up at old that I started to pay attention. With no defense against the inevitability of headlong growth . . . more frankly known as shrinkage . . . and being locked in with it alone for twenty-four hours every day, I decided to make a game of it. For those of you who do not just smirk at the back covers of chapbooks but actually read the poetry inside-you, the twerps, nerds, dweebs, wimps, duffers, dolts, rubes, yokels, geeks, goody two-shoes, molly-coddled milquetoasts, and jellyfish literary intellects of the world-I would call my activity a study . . . a research project, if you will . . . of a qualitative kind. The design was carefully constructed and carried out by someone other than myself, but I did manage to track the results. The more cogent outcomes I compressed into the rough lines of poetry that you will find published within this otherwise fine chapbook. I hope you will open the cover and read a few. And for the many readers of Earth Dirt & Dust-my six-chapbook anthology of poetry-who demanded a full treatment of poetic thought dedicated to the actualities of aging, I hope you enjoy.