Sealed Windows
A progressive woman is something that she’s not.
Way back in the fifties she’s permanently caught.
Travel to new countries? Definitely no.
She won’t let other countries profit from her dough!
She has no curiosity about the human race.
Her interest in humanity ends in her own face.
She sits before her mirror like a window to the world.
Is her lipstick even—her hair correctly curled?
Bravery to her is answering the door.
She walks out to her mailbox, but further? No. No more.
She boils all her bed linen, lest creatures linger there
to creep onto her body and nest within her hair.
All the wounds her life will bear long ago were healed.
She’s a preserved specimen of life, hermetically sealed.
She’ll face no other heartache, no risks of being hurt.
She will not chance a world of germs, bacteria and dirt.
Cats are unhygienic and dogs an equal threat.
A goldfish in a bowl is her single lonely pet.
No companion goldfish to fill its tiny bowl.
Its full attention trained on her seems to be her goal.
All those tight-sealed windows with their draperies pulled tight.
All those single bedside bulbs burning through the night.
Behind each building’s blinded eyes, how many just like her—
sealed inside a bell jar, safe from the world’s rude whirr?
Esther’s Weekly Writing Prompt is “Window.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Excellent and incisive. I wish she’d let someone in.
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How many like this? Especially in today’s world.
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MANY
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Wow. That’s some poem!
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Thanks, Marilyn. I am not this woman, but perhaps with age a little bit of her creeps into us all.
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I don’t think we are shutting things out. More like we are recognizing what we can’t do and trying to shift to things we enjoy, but don’t require physical things we can’t do. My MIND — aside from waiting — is worried but otherwise (not counting an inability to remember) okay. The memory part is annoying though I eventually find what I’m looking for. I think I need a REBOOT,
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I lose things more often than I find things!
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I find the stuff I was oreviously looking for. And then immediately forget where I saw it. When or if I need it, I STILL won’t find it. Life in the slower lane.
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Oh she must be very lonely.
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There’s so much emotion in this poem. It’s one that stays with us for some time after reading.
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Thanks, Esther for you generous comment. What more could a writer want than an admission that something they have written has hovered around in someone’s mind for awhile?
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Very powerful
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Take two. I don’t think we are “closing our minds.” I think we are beginning to recognize what we can’t do anymore and trying to figure out what we enjoy and still CAN do. I do know people who have shut out the world because they don’t find any pleasure in it. We aren’t doing that. We are trying to cope with limitations, uninvited limits with which we have to cope. Somehow. Younger people don’t GET this, that will-power and grit take you only so far when you are closer to 80 than 70. Sanity decrees trying to find satisfaction in what is available now. Which is quite tricky enough.
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True.. for you and some others..me included. However this poem was written about a different sort of person. I know people who have been like this their entire lives.
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Some do NOT lock themselves away. Instead, they are Trump cultists with guns. I don’t think that’s a better way.
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What a character!
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