Figuring Out Life While Aging
“Take care of yourself” they said
But I didn’t know how
to be
that selfish.
“Like on a plane with a dependant” they said
“And the oxygen masks drop down,
put yours on first;
that’s being responsible.”
Alone by the summer lake
There’s a breeze.
In the dark of night
the pine boughs
thresh
and sway.
Bare maple branches rest
against the light scrimmed
sky.
In the grey of morning
the silent streets
stride
down
to the lake’s
rhythmic rumble
and the sun’s path.
What matters most, after food and shelter,
is love: presence, listening, and being heard.
Family celebrations, holidays and anniversaries,
offer joy and, sometimes, the most exquisite
pain
with loss: death, estrangement, abandonment.
We humans flee pain and seek joy, hungry
even for artificial joy, artificial solace that
we eat, drink, and smoke.
The paradise of family and friends gathering
warms us, gives us joy, teaches us
our need for the richness of loving.
In the darkness of absence, in our aloneness,
we humans twist and turn
reluctantly facing the opportunity of recognizing
what we had, what we need, what we can seek:
the delight of trusted ones and hugging,
the warmth of knowing ourselves as human.
I walk my sorrow
on familiar streets
I am leaving.
My body morphs;
soul changes stretch me,
shaking me out of my shell.
Strange energies arise;
suddenly I find myself
reaching forward.
Time spirals as I approach
leaving,
both releasing and opening.
In the 3rd year of my grief
I woke up
to my readjusted self
and conscious mourning.
I had new thoughts
discovering,
recognizing,
other possibilities.
Energies rose
and swirled within me.
I reached out
with questions.
Like clothes tangled together
from the dryer
I twist and try to pull apart
confusing feelings.
Easier than clothes tangled
from the washer -
wrapped, locked, together
refusing.
The creature they clothe -
more worn,
more torn,
more tangled.
Leaf clad branches wave,
black against the grey light
of an approaching
morning.
I am wound with words,
enchained and given wings, both.
Words wound, but no words, (silence),
wound more.
Grey monstrous ghosts lurk
beyond the edges of the map,
while winds blow me
away from my home.
My GPS, set to “No tolls, No highways”,
is failing,
circling me through
detours and closed roads.
I drive through fog,
alert only to the back-up beeping
of warnings
and blockages.
This old sideroad,
formerly a highway,
might be allowing me to approach
a new morning.
I am a person of metaphors:
trumpeting truth
through indirections,
whispering wishes
into the wind.
There rises from deep within me,
before thought, shaping feeling,
choices, sometimes words —
heart and gut desires
Sometimes I listen,
sometimes I hear,
sometimes I close my eyes
and plunge another way.
The crest of a thought
wakes me, warns me,
pulls me back onto the path
and towards the shape of my life.
I had allowed my heart
to wither
and dry out
in the absence
of one I loved.
Looking at the lushness
of another summer,
I discovered
different sources
greening me up.
With the swelling and softening
of my heart,
beyond tears, my eyes
Could recognize
new wellsprings of joy.
Learning Living 