Figuring Out Life While Aging
When I lost myself:
I am extinct.
No part of me goes forward.
I am ashes
Underground.
My stories silenced.
My mutating memories
dismissed.
My sorrows and joys erased:
blankness bracketing grief.
When I First Returned
My death still bled
into a suppurating
numbness,
and terror.
It didn’t feel like a choice:
study the wound
or disappear.
I agreed to look.
Now
I stand beside the river
I came from and will return to;
I look into it,
still learning to swim.
The burn of the morning sun,
the memory of smoke
soften my shoulders
as I walk past,
not thinking of death
yet,
till
one almost resembling
the one I knew
(years ago, in my youth),
walks by, and
my memory blurs
as though I see through tears.
Remnants of other lives
invade, infest, infuse my life,
enlighten me, cling to me.
drag me down, lift me up,
surround me.
I persist
pushing the furniture
of my past,
clearing space
so I can see.
We are temporary,
fragile and vulnerable,
compelled to walk forward
in this dark culvert,
death ahead and daylight behind,
with only a small light, and
everything that we are.
***
*Composed after watching “Cardinal”, a series based on Giles Blunt’s Novels
The dreams I don’t remember
disturb me:
my mother’s mink coat,
thrown on the floor,
over something.
That lover in the closet,
offering disinterested kindnesses.
The flowered skirt
I never wore.
All memories of failures
or escapes.
Perfume in a Pandemic
is pointless.
I watch, listen to your
simulacrums, your untouchable
screen ghosts.
I yearn
For smell and taste..
Perfume in a pandemic
is comforting, I shake
the tiny bottle, my finger as stopper.
I stroke my pulse points,
bathe in, breath in, grasp
the memory:
the clutching joy of
your embracing warmth
as we hugged.
Perfume in a pandemic is essential.
“Sea change or sea-change is an English idiomatic expression which denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue.” Wikipedia
My heart stumbles
as our world’s clutch
misses,
and the gears judder
and jerk
stripped of their connections.
We don’t know
when or what
it foretells.
How do I decide
how to live
in this strange wilderness?
I lived in libraries and classrooms,
More solitary among the living,
More alive in pages turning,
Building my armour and bridges.
The silence at home covered
Flattened noise; obscured dreams and
muffled resentments, darkened mirrors
Seeking to display projected images.
O, Boccaccio,
Where are you now?
I need you to take me away from
graphs and maps and the tv’s heavy breathing.
I flee the city but yearn for
its pleasures:
smiles, touches, and fearless
encounters.
I need absorbing stories
and happy endings.
Learning Living 