Figuring Out Life While Aging
With the silence of light in darkness,
with the yearning for tenderness
of an obedient child,
the compounding of grief
and relief
releases
comforting perfume:
scars and other gifts
that have awakened me
in a forgiving world.
—/
The delightful impermanence
of sunlit flickering shadows
shows me a path
out of the fearful
cave, out into
the blue-skyed green-leafing
world,
where storms can pass,
and living through them
teaches the beauty of joy.
The sharp chill of a cold spring day as Good Friday reigns over Easter.
I wake sulky, reluctant, reviewing my resentments, lonely, yet don’t want visitors. Nothing satisfies: the sun is too bright; Our home too quiet. I want to hide. Another funeral - sitting huddled within myself, fists clenched, trying not to listen, wanting to leave, shaking. I crave - a softening in my throat, eyes that don’t itch, a conversation no longer available. Somewhere there is joy, waiting, perhaps, to flash through me, again, but now I’m grieving.
I exhale grief like smoke, On a hot summer night alone Except for emails And ads. Where is he now, body and spirit, Shrouded beyond In mysteries. I turn away, Pick up my tasks, look at nothing, and hide in darkness.
An Excerpt
O send me disorienting dreams, I pray, and save me from a rational life.
The sullen morning light, the cloudy afternoons, the grey-whites of salted roads and dirty snow piles. The holiday lights removed, the newscaster’s COVID numbers, fogged glasses above serious masks, and black-coated distancing. I huddle indoors remembering summer’s colours and pre-COVID times, I am grateful for hope and my flowering window plants.
– Margaret Atwood
Old woman in a blue dress stands in the sun, Stares at her grandmother’s old home And the ancient ferns, Wonders what it will be like to follow her.
Sometimes the mirror moves showing me what I’d rather not see. Memories shift and reform revealing different stories, painfully clear now. We wear such narrow glasses spotlighting one version, blind to and blurring peripheral possibilities.
My grandfather used to say he’d eat
Sawdust
If it had whipped cream
On it.
In my sawdust times
I chase the whipping
Cream
Of pleasing people.
“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,
I feel the breeze.
Learning Living 