Figuring Out Life While Aging
for Anthony The words I can’t say Swallow me up, Choke me, As I try to spit them out. They are my truth That I close my eyes to And deny, throttling me. My teeth clamped, My breathing rapid, I gag, Then speak And almost say What I need to hear So i can know What I know.
Late I came to love
what I’d lost,
fled from,
and clung to.
The cloud clotted sky
hangs over the autumn
fields – pale gold, green, and empty –
racing past
the life I built.
Finding the route
to my beginnings, buried
with only stone
stories, I grieve
my losses.
Summer-like open window
Distant hammers, distant highway:
Memories from an old photo album
Sometimes confusion or an unarmed feeling
explodes,
lit by words bursting
into meanings previously hidden in darkness and silence.
Rejoice:
a part of your brain has
new synopses
shaping your
Mind.
Bardo
In some schools of Buddhism, bardo … is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
The sun angles wrong on my eyelids;
I resist waking in this strange place.
I feel my father’s room;
The plants gone, the walls striped
Of the photos of the many people he loved,
The chairs and chest huddled together,
The bed barren, the lounge chair empty,
His life in boxes
To be removed.
Blessing
We live
In all our messy glory;
Trapped in time,
Suspended in place.
Waiting
For the next stage,
The next hope,
The answer that eludes us.
Hold out your hands.
Cup them together
To receive this grace:
You are already holy.
Another Blessing
Stand where you are,
Reach out your arms,
Throw back your head,
Open your mouth.
Listen:
There is silence under.
Open your eyes:
Light bleeds into the dark.
Do not forget this moment.
The Third Blessing
There is no time solitary
Or gathered together
Where you are absent
Or alone.
Breathe,
Grasp,
Release,
Bow down.
Reach out,
Pull in,
Let go,
Rest.
She knows winter
comes soon
but
summer sings now.
Her dancing
has slowed;
she’s never
had a song before.
Now, she has little left.
Silence,
and slowly,
arms raised, she twirls.
Pale birds, hopping, fluttering, flying –
Outside the window.
Inside,
People approach,
Hands together, bow –
Scarlet- robed Holy ones sit, nod.
One scarlet and gold draped chair
Waits.
The thangka paintings
Surround
The seated searchers.
Hashtag: #spoileralert
– After reading poems by Emily Dickinson, and Tweets on Twitter
My future hides before me;
The ending pre-ordained.
The losses will continue
But bright joys may remain.
My feet will grow more tender;
My knees and hips more lame.
I may remember much;
I may forget my name.
The ending could be sudden,
Or agonies, – and slow.
But life that waits before me
Holds time and love and hope.
I’ve lost the password to what used to be my life.
The air is strange and I’m losing my sense of balance.
I search through remnants in the home I sold,
wondering what to keep, or sell, or trash.
I listen to the chatter of family discord:
recent losses, expected deaths, while mangled hopes
fall like tears, splashing on me,
where I sit, creating a new password.
Learning Living 