Figuring Out Life While Aging
2016
In youth we come through our bodies as explorers
seeking and measuring,
astounded and disappointed
as we grow into ourselves.
In our long midlife, we travel our path,
forgetting and wandering,
sometimes grateful, mostly blindly seeking
the more we yearn for.
Now, our bodies re-astound us:
aching and refusing,
complaining and attacking,
reminding us of time.
What’s left after the washing is put away and the dishes are done? What’s left after they all leave without waving goodbye? I close myself in the small room with my past struggles and accomplishments and reach for . . . What’s left after anger and desolation? What’s left is an old woman reaching out to find what’s left when she becomes invisible, unheralded, alone and waiting to find out who she will now become.
Learning Living 