My Holiday Anxiety

Alone, elderly, widowed, 

the family all scattered —

what I dread about Christmas

is the kindness of rescuing friends …

but refusals would seem

not only rude, ungrateful, but weird.

So, false polite thanks as they drag me

from sweet Pagan solitude. 

Actually, I did tell the friend who invited me this year, 'I don't really do Christmas.' But she said, ' Wouldn't you just like to come for a nice Vegan meal?' Put like that, it did sound nice, and I accepted happily.

This poem started out to be a sijo, but I needed an extra line, so I'm calling it an extended  sijo.

Written for Friday Writings #157: Holiday Anxieties.

Knowing What I Know

Assignment: write about an adventure you dream of. I realise that, at 85, I have already lived all the adventures I ever yearned for. 

Most of them involved travel. And of course I dreamed of — and found — the adventure of love. I feel no lack, no longing. I am replete.

Then I realise that the lack of any hankering is because I’m still in the best adventure. I’ve reached an understanding: Life itself is the greatest, the grandest, the most exciting adventure! It’s a quieter adventure by now …  but also deeper. It’s beautiful.

sunset

along the horizon —

I’m blessed

I wish I could share my understandings. Having lived to be old, I have — as we are told to expect — acquired some wisdom. There are things I have learned, things I now know. How much easier would it be for younger friends if I could pass these things on? But they don’t want to listen. They argue against the pearls I drop, they swear it’s different for them. They won’t even try my way.

Perhaps they’re right. We are all different. Temperaments and circumstances vary. Also, what is appropriate at one age might be all wrong at a different stage of life.

nearing the end

I see that my story 

is mine alone

I realise, reluctantly, that I must allow those I care for to make their own mistakes; that is the way they will learn whatever lessons they need. The only way to learn the great truths is to live them … live into them.

unheard — 

wisely, I resign myself 

to silence

Written for Friday Writings #156 at Poets and Storytellers United: Let's Go Adventuring!  

Always

 

They think it’s long ago and far away,

those who read what I wrote of you

forty years ago and more. It’s an old story

yes, but nothing of it has faded. 

‘Love,’ you wrote, ‘as long as you’re still 

the person you are today.’  I’m not, of course,

but dying fixed you in time. You are always, 

now, the person you were then. So it’s true

what I had written (first) to you: ‘Love always.’

That’s OK. I’m glad to hold you in my heart 

for eternity — or as long as I shall live …

The night around me grows very still.

It is past the midnight hour. 

How many dear ghosts walk?

Possession and Loss

I think of that painting my mother had:

the handsome though saturnine aristocrat.

He looked like the humourless brother

of The Laughing Cavalier. Yet I liked it. 

And I wish I had claimed it after she died,

but I wasn’t thinking of such things then.

It is long lost now, along with all her other 

dispersed or abandoned possessions.

I see him so clearly still, in his place

on the wall of a dear house (also long gone)

in his fancy hat with the swirling brim,

and the lustrous dark green coat-sleeves.

I remember, too, a card I cherished

for its image of the Green Woman:

wrinkled and wise, in front of trees,

like the vision of her I’d once had.

A student begged to borrow it, to copy. 

I was reluctant, but she promised 

to return it very soon. She never did. 

She moved  away, leaving no address.

Remembering, I see again, or still, 

the image of that nut-brown, smiling face,

the kindly, knowing eyes. I feel again

the deep recognition between us.

So many decades later, the clarity

with which these faces return to mind

tells me the pictures need not be mourned.

They could never truly be lost or stolen.

Written for Friday Writings #154: Opposite Concepts at Poets and Storytellers United.

What Delights Me

 

Turning 85, as I am doing now,

causes me not only delight, but

a probably quite unjustified pride.

After all, I have rarely given myself 

enough exercise or sleep. Further,

I’ve been overweight for decades.

So it’s all down to luck, and genes.

Thank you, long-lived ancestors —

albeit I note, with yet more pride,

I’ve now outlived you all (all I know).

But being still alive delights me, also,

for many other reasons. Life itself, despite 

its many ills and trials, is a source of joy. 

There are still roses growing, willows

by streams, and river red gums too,

and hoop pines piercing the high sky.

There are sunsets, there are clouds

that look like angels, and mountains

which dent the horizon with bending edges

resembling resting warriors, or dragons.

There are friends, and memories of past

friends, including many cats and dogs. 

Grievous loss — yet they are not lost.

There are books and paintings and music,

movies and laughter, my sons well grown …

I am blessed. I am richly blessed. I know it.

My response to my own prompt for Friday Writings #153 at Poets and Storytellers United. (Written 11 Nov. '24, the day before my 85th birthday.)

Holding My Breath

 

I’m not very good at doing that.

Push me in the pool, I’ll thrash, 

come up choking and spluttering

frantically. After even a short walk

I’m puffed, stopping in my tracks

to wait, bend over, gulp new air.

It doesn’t matter, I tell myself;

the whole panorama of Nature

does the same. I hear the thunder

blundering about in the dark,

enraged by its own clumsiness —

yelling, then pausing and gasping.

I imagine the whole world is old

like me, and having the same

trouble breathing — but perhaps 

I am mistaken, perhaps it’s only 

humanity which is on its last gasp,

and the world is still young in its time.

I’d like that. I want it to last longer,

to be rid of the harm we have caused.

I want it to go on eternally. Then

I could be resigned to my own death.

Might I return to see it thrive again?

If only! But I won’t hold my breath. 

Written for Friday Writings #51 at Poets and Storytellers United: 'Holding your breath.'

Days of thunder

always sudden —

I unplug modem, devices.

(Modem’s new.

Earlier storm 

killed the last.)

Few chances 

to share poems online

though I still write. 

Silver lining:

time

to find them.

In response to Friday Writings #151 at Poets and Storytellers United, where Magaly invites us to be inspired by Mary Oliver's poem,  “The Uses of Sorrow”: 

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. 

Admittedly, the 'darkness' in my poem is more in the nature of an inconvenience. But I had trouble thinking of any darkness I've experienced which was also a gift. I guess it takes me even longer than it did Mary.

Warning

warning —

fairies live here

(Neighbourhood Watch)

from my front window

Bittersweet October

Because we have turn-about sun and rain

in a world where weather has gone mad

tumbling over each other too quickly,

the abundant growth of Spring exaggerated,

everything flourishing faster than ever

richly adorning the whole landscape, 

surrounding us wherever we look 

with burgeoning leaves and flowers,

every hot day and every wet one

enticing our senses, even as

the swift changes set us reeling …

Our reactions too are rapidly

changing – one day we think,

This is Summer, ahead of time,

only to wake to a sudden return,

bewildering in its rapidity, to Winter.

Even as we rejoice, we begin to expect,

reliably unreliable, constant overturning.

October in the Southern Hemisphere is officially in the middle of Spring.

Written for Magaly's prompt for Friday Writings #148: Bittersweet October, at Poets and Storytellers United.