Figuring Out Life While Aging
My noisy mind
grafts
my longed for
or my feared
events into
stories I’m revisiting.
The frontispiece
says 1992,
from my dead parents
with wishes
for my purple
old age.
Now I read
stories I fear
and remember
setting the book aside,
pleased I kept it;
knowing it’s prophetic.
For KJEC
Sometimes
when I don’t hear your step
and remember how
you disliked heights,
I look out
from my airie
and search.
Often
when I touch your books
and remember how much
you fed my mind and heart,
I hug myself
alone in my airie
and smile.
Always
when I think of you
and remember how
you listened
smiling and seriously,
cradling my self
my airie expands
with all our gifts.
Cross-posted - https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/my-poems
My poems are my life
spoken from my dancing fingers,
held cupped in digital space
while my being swirls through time.
Dodging alignments wastes
gifts,
slows coalescences
induces boredoms.
Learning the steps
of my dance
moves my deaf heart
into the vital whirl.
Yet pain or fear-shaped pauses
can refine
the texture of the path,
opening to unknown vistas.
The sky is never
still,
constant in unnoticeable
changes,
hidden till time passes
Like who I love
and how
this moment holds
their presence
and releases us into changing.
I would have wept at the sunrise
had I not smelled rain coming;
there is only joy with the bird’s flight
over the lake’s unfathomable depth.
When the heart offers to open
and the mind does not jail it,
the moment and the path coincide
into the blind seer’s holy gift.
I would not refuse it.
I could not refuse its shaping power;
even through the tangled fears,
sunlight warms and draws me.
cross-posted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/morning-winds
I turn to the mirror
that is no longer there
seeking an answer
to the invisible question.
The wind blows
changes across time,
neutral within the moment
as a butterfly’s flight.
The pines stand black
against a grey-white sky.
They, too, are temporary
and will rot or burn,
but their boughs dance
and sway
in the passing wind.
Now.
Crossposted – https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/moving-through-liminal-time
Standing on a threshold
with the past pulling away,
while facing a dark
pathless space
is daunting.
Can I hope
the pathway
I was trying to shape
will find my heart
if I close my eyes and trust?
Cross-posted at https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/ragged-grace
The time of ragged
grace - for some -
is ending
and like a tired two year old
I sob “No, no,NO!”
to the bullies
drunk on power.
I have been, and am
complicit,
seeking my small
power
to wrap myself
in imagined
safety.
This is a koan
I will not dance to,
but stumble through,
seeking …
joining others
I have pitied.
I don’t want to write this poem.
Cross- posted at https://joanvinallcox.substack.com/p/liminal-time?r=oj9j7
Liminal Time
Sunshine blurs ghosts,
makes them translucent.
In the dark, they solidify.
Hiding in closets and corners,
they thicken with memories
wisping out from lost letters.
I am waiting
for their approval,
their retreat, their acceptance.
Learning Living 