Category Archives: Aging

Sculpted

Sculpted

These lines upon my face are ripple marks that represent
all of my life’s ebb and flow, those tides that life has sent.
Calligraphy defining those advantages provided
along with life’s misfortunes that somehow I abided.

Life gives and takes away, sometimes in equal measure—
pain spicing our life as surely as the pleasure—
smile lines as well as creases left by frowns.
Surely, there’s no shortage of life’s ups and downs.

It is the hand of nature sculpting animal and flower,
altering and remolding hour after hour.
From dinosaur to newborn babe—fish and bird and tree,
there is no end to our world’s originality.

Time is the finest sculptor of everything we see.
It is the very master of creativity.
Animal, vegetable, mineral—no two things quite the same.
Constant alteration is evolution’s game.

 

Prompt words today are ripple marks, represent, spice, definition, shortage and advantage.

Creative Calibration

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Image by Oren Atias on Unsplash, used with permission.

Creative Calibration

She was a paragon of beauty. Diminutive perfection.
The persona she constructed an incredible confection.
Each year observance of her birth a full-scale celebration.
Every year, a slight deduction in its calibration.
So I’m afraid it’s true that by the time she passed away
and met her final sunset at the ending of the day,
though sexy in her youth, in her dotage she was hotter,
and if you took her word for it, was younger than her daughter!

Word prompts today are paragon, diminutive, celebration, afraid and sunset.

Lazy Feet

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Lazy Feet

Crossing the room or traversing the plain,
one foot goes in front of the other again.
It is the business of shoe after shoe
to follow each other through sand, dirt or goo.

They have easy going through fields filled with clover,
but when they meet something they have to climb over,
their task is much harder. No reflecting or browsing,
for climbing up hills is ten times more rousing.

They  pump up the blood, these mountains and ramps.
They irritate arches and instigate cramps.
They cause blisters, pulled muscles, and wear a girl out.
That’s why I don’t often saunter about.

You won’t often find me walking out there
with the wind to my back and stirring my hair.
For although there’s less scenery, I do not care.
I prefer bed or hammock or chair.

Prompt words today are something, browse, revenge, traverse and business.

Affirmation

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Affirmation

That crepey neck.
I’m going to look like my Grandmother.
But I refuse to wear blue tennis shoes like her,
and when my jewelry starts turning black,
I’ll stop wearing it.
I won’t use straight pins for buttons
or rat my hair and roll it in a bun.
I won’t  save Cracker Jack prizes in canning jars
or give all my money to the Seventh day Adventists.

I will not save food in my purse to take home from family dinners,
and I won’t let so many cats sleep in the henhouse.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night

Skinny-dipping in One’s Sixties

 

Skinny-dipping in One’s Sixties

While driving on a country lane, I spy a little lake
and decide that I should skinny-dip, just for old time’s sake.
Lack of a suit is not a problem, for this spot is so secluded
that I jump into the water both nuded and deluded,
for after just five minutes, although the night is dark,
three cars pull up with lights full-on and proceed to park
directly in my exit spot with windows all rolled down,
music spilling out from them. Teenagers from the town
out here for the thrill of it to swill a little beer
and have a wild party with no parents near.

Like a deer in headlights, I am blinded by the glare.
I quickly put my hands back to obscure my derriere.
Then, desperate for cover, sprint for a nearby bush.
But when I cover up my front, I have to bare my tush.
Skinny-dipping simply doesn’t work with lookers-on,
and I guess that I am trapped until these partiers are gone.
With no hope on the horizon, I hunch and drip and cower,
forgetful of the blanket I had slung over a bower
just a few short yards away, but finally I sprint for it,
and wrapping it around me, I am grateful that I went for it
in spite of all the cheers and huzzahs and the blinding light
of the headlights of the teenagers who view my frenzied flight.

Once I reach my car, the far horizon is my goal.
I gun the engine and I speed over dip and knoll.
If I need to teach the lesson of this ill-advised adventure
of senior citizen skinny-dipping, I’m the one to censure,
for I was a solo-act swimming swimsuit-free,
and the only one that I can implicate is me.
I guess that skinny-dipping is best left in the past,
for the skinny body necessary simply doesn’t last!

Prompt words today are forgetful, horizon, desperate, implicate and deer.

Birthday Preferences of an Aging Starlet

Birthday Preferences of an Aging Starlet

Buy me no presents, bake me no cake.
Hang no reminders for my sake.
All these attempts to jubilate me
simply serve to aggravate me.

Let birthday banners remain furled.
Share not the knowledge with the world
that I, alas, am one year older.
Strike it from my bio folder.

This trend of aging gracefully
does not work for dames like me
who strut our stuff upon the stage,
for starlets aren’t allowed to age.

In lieu of throwing me a bash,
why not simply give me cash?
I’ll put the money to good use
obscuring aging’s cruel abuse.

Advancing years require rebuttal,
so I prefer to be more subtle.
I need a simple tuck of face
ere I approach the casting place.

I won’t allow youth to defy me.
while I have means to petrify me.
So spare me cards soulful or funny
I prefer you give me money!!

Prompt words today are subtle, cash, knowledgejubilate and bake.

 

 

Dark Thoughts

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Dark Thoughts

At four in the morning, the old cat begins her morning crabby  high-pitched “wahhhhrrr.” The wind picks up and I go to pee. Open my laptop and with its very first light, a tiny beetle flies to the screen to wander back and forth, in search of what? Company or bugs even more miniscule? And where has it been in the interim? In what obscure corner of my world has it been waiting for light, like the old cat, barely able to restrain itself , seeking my company at my first sign of stirring?

Does the rest of the world wait for me like this, or is it death lurking in the shadows, waiting for its time? Has life slowed down to this one long communal waiting? My sick friend has left but leaves behind her some of her dejection. I cannot shake it. Return to it after each short departure into the world. I feel an eternity of the ills of the world around me. Optimist rebel in an enemy camp all my life, I now feel myself sinking into the ordinary world. My mood refuses to shift with the sunrise. Even the old cat, still unfed, leaves me alone to my dark mood.

I fear the power of sleep, not wanting to return to that half-remembered dream I woke from. Fear this new self I seem to be becoming. Suddenly, I fear eternity—feel it not my friend.

Prompt words today are camp, rebel, eternity.

Rope


Rope

They’ve dispelled my excitement with a coiled line of rope—
imprisoning my fantasies and murdering that hope
that fairies really do exist with dragons and magicians.
Using scientific words and proofs of the tacticians,
they’ve put the rope around the neck of childhood and jerked
and I admit the strategy of reason really worked!
I don’t believe in Santa Claus. I don’t believe in fables.
They’ve ruined Cinderella and lynched Anne of Green Gables.
Pure reason is my only friend now that they’ve slain the rest.
They’ve installed stark reality but murdered all the zest.
I’ll welcome second childhood when silliness again
replaces stark reality to cushion the world’s pain.

 

Prompt words for today are line, dispel and rope.
The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a quadrille (44 words only) making use of the word dragon.

Retirement?

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Retirement?

My future is amorphous. It has no shape or plan.
Up the creek without a paddle, I have no job or man.
My freedom? It is ludicrous. I’m well out of the chase.
All my time is leisure time. I live a slower pace.
Who named this phase re-tirement? There’s nothing that is tiring.
If they want to tire me out again, they’d best replace my wiring.

 

Prompt words today are chase, ludicrous, amorphous and paddle.