Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘aging’

New Eyes

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on 26 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »

the boy stood there as I drove by
staring at me as if
he’d never seen my like
and of course he hadn’t
for I was a new thing
the first of my kind
to him
and I thought

oh, please, give me those eyes
those new eyes
eyes that have not yet learned
to see the world
as pigeon-holed types
sorted and rendered into
a broad-brushed tonal pastiche

driving on I prayed
let me see things
in their wondrous uniqueness
not just as
a house a fence a woman walking her dogs
but as

this house
clad in bright happy greens
partnered by a particolored sweetgum tree
brass bright on its red door
mullioned windows glinting
in shafts of the morning’s autumn light

this fence
gap-toothed and silvered with age
mottled with lichen
bent by the storms of years
a ragged highway for squirrels
racing from yard to yard

this woman
bundled in her well-worn tweed
grey hair peeking out from under a magenta cloche
breath puffing like word balloons as she talked
to the tired waddling retriever his snout misted with age
to the jaunty-stepping shepherd that looked up to ask
am I a good dog today?

let me live in this real world
let me revel in this multifarious creation
let me see life as it is

give me new eyes
again

Read Full Post »

Extensions

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 10 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »

I do not recognize my hands, today,
hide-wrapped and rough,
fingers moving all as one, a unit lacking youth’s independence,
working like
a team of horses, fingers yoked in tandem,
brushing crumbs or combing hair,
reaching out
claw-like, deliberate, mechanical.

Gone is the fluidity
that typed like a piano etude,
that tested the strength of rain
fingers splayed, palm up to the lowering sky.

They seem, now, more like my father’s hands,
leathered, laced with welted scratches from thorn or cat,
thick fingers slightly curved, open,
as if holding the memories
of tools and wood and mugs and plates
and books and pens and paper
and forks and spoons
and a sweetheart’s hand.

They do not close as once they did,
so tightly that they could catch
my breath on winter days,
and when now they speak
in gesture they are
slow, brutish, leaving most
to context and implication.

And, of course, the pain they carry, that is new as well,
the constant reminder of dull aches,
the sharp-edged recriminations of grip and release.

I have always seen them, in many ways, as extensions of me,
strong and supple, quietly expressive,
nimble in deed and thought, switching with ease
from fountain pen
to computer keys,
from kitchen knife
to garden tool,
from dovetail jig
to a viola’s strings
to my true love’s hair.

This still is true, I suppose, as they and I both are
a good bit older, a dash more tired,
content to spend time in restful contemplation.

We still do all the things we used to, only
with a mindfulness that comes from
a slow paring down of life from what we need
to what we desire
to do, to feel, to create.

Perhaps I do not recognize them
because I do not know who I am,
in this time.

Perhaps they are teaching me.

Clever hands.

Let’s learn together.

Read Full Post »

To Old Friends

Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 25 Jul 2025| 1 Comment »

to these old eyes
we none of us have aged
and all are as when first we met

though days and years
and decades all
have trundled past our feast

though unforgiving fate
has called a few away
and left their seats unfilled

and loft-bound bitterness
and joy have played for us
their varied minstrel tunes

it’s just the failing candlelight
that limns us each
in haloed wisps of age

for if I squint I once again
can see us clear and bright
with vibrant youth

all straining ‘gainst the slips
and hungry soon
to master dreamed-of hopes

so charge your glass
and be upstanding so
that we may raise a toast

to all we’ve known
and all we’ve loved
and all that yet remains ahead

for life with all its sorrowed pain
is better lived than not
and better still
with friends beside

Read Full Post »

Vignette—30Jun24

Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged , , , , on 30 Jun 2024| Leave a Comment »

He let the book down onto his lap and closed his eyes. The window ushered in the breeze of early morning, cold and full of the electric scent of coming rain. He luxuriated in the feeling of gooseflesh on his arms—what was it called? horri-something? yes, horripilation, when the skin grows tight and the hair stands up—as the cold air sailed past him, over him, through him. It had been an unpleasantly brief night, one filled with aches and discomfort. Aging wasn’t easy, or so his body told him, frequently. But the early morning’s grey-shrouded light, the breeze heavy with moisture seasoned by salt from shoreline waves, the feeling of the book’s rough paper still tingling in his fingertips, this was life, this was being alive, and the perfect way to start the last day of June near the edge of Puget Sound.

k

Read Full Post »

Ages

Posted in Poetry, Writing, tagged , , , on 06 Nov 2023| Leave a Comment »

I am not the man
I used to be
not in any sense

I have been rebuilt
a half dozen times
sloughing off my past
for a new shell

Top to toe
each atom
each molecule
has been replaced
like parts under warranty

I raise my refurbished hand
to shade my eyes and
sunlight fires my flesh
with light aeons old

But the iron in my blood
the carbon in my bones
though new to me
predate this blazing sun

My ever renewing form
is a gift from dying stars
birthed of elements
roared into being
at the genesis
of the universe itself

Read Full Post »

Evanescent

Posted in Poetry, tagged , , , , , , on 08 Jun 2023| Leave a Comment »

he took the time
looked up at day’s end
at sun-fired clouds
watching
slow subtle shifting
rose red orange
spark flame ember
glowing rusting cooling

he took the time
enjoyed the splash
of shadowed flights
on the sunset canvas
hard-edged jetliner dark-winged crow arrow-fast songbird
from farthest to nearer to near
all the layered worlds
sunlight to twilight
that lay between
his eye and the heavens

he took the time
not for the beauty
filling the space
between his heartbeats
but to give time its due
not to be spent filled wasted
but lived in
a constant transition
a string of nows
reaching
from dark to dark
without end

Read Full Post »

Beatle Birthday

Posted in Culture, tagged , , , , , on 01 Dec 2022| 1 Comment »

This weekend is my Beatle Birthday.

I had my “LP” Birthday in 1992, my “Single” Birthday in 2003—and if you’re old enough to get those references, I see you—but they went by relatively (or completely) unnoticed, unmarked, unremembered. (My “78” Birthday, in 2036, might be the same, and I hope I’m lucky enough to reach it.)

Since 1967, though, I’ve thought fondly of this coming milestone, despite the fact that I was convinced I’d never reach such an “advanced” age. The song pretty much nailed what I looked forward to in my elder years (sans grandkids, of course; never wanted kids, much less grandkids), with its images of puttering in the gardens, fixing things about the house, taking a month at the seaside in summertime.

I mentioned last time that my retirement is finally visible on the horizon, and this birthday, routinely imagined for the past 55 years, is a time to stop, look around, and evaluate.

Some of my friends have already retired. Some have put their all into new ventures. Some hopped on a plane on Day One and began (or continued) to travel the world. Some, sadly, took ill, beginning entirely unplanned journeys. I admit, I compared the image in my head with how they began their Third Act, and felt the old report card put-down of “Not performing up to his potential.”

It’s not as though I plan never to travel. It’s not as though I plan not to try new things, learn new things. It’s not as though I plan to spend my entire retirement digging the weeds and fixing fuses. It’s just that, in my heart, after decades of pushing, learning, wrangling, fretting, struggling, planning, pacing, saving, working, I merely want to slow down and enjoy the ticking of the clock, the crackle of the fire, perhaps the crash of waves on the shore, and the settling of ice in a dram of whisky.

And, of course, I hope that she will still need me, that she will still feed me, when I’m sixty-four.

k

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »