Tag Archives: poem about aging

Remembrance of Things Past Aug 17, 2020

14 Replies

Remembrance of Things Past

I think I’ve vanquished wanderlust. I do not pine for travel.
All my wandering hopes and dreams have started to unravel.
I have no need to ameliorate the life that I am living.
I find that simpler pleasures are ones that keep on giving
pleasure far after the fact. It seems that memory substitutes
to satisfy what once I gained via other attributes.
Events in memory flower again  after their first flowering.
A simple  perfect blossom on a plant once lush and towering.
I no longer need it all. What I have is sufficient.
I’ve learned so much this lifetime that with more I’d be omniscient.
Year by year and friend by friend, I’m losing more connections.
I only hope that I will not outlive my recollections!

The prompt words today are vanquish, wanderlust, longer, ameliorate and hope. 

(Click on photos below to increase size.)

 

“That” picture in the wheelbarrow. I look shocked at being so posed.
Merry-go-Round
Fishing with dad and my sisters.
My fifth birthday party.
Me as a Teenie Weenie I”m the hammy one imitating the Sunbeam Bread girl.
First Grade
1953
1981
1973
Bali
Bali

I was looking for one photo to illustrate the poem and got sort of carried away..I could have added sixty more, so if you are from a period of my life not represented, sorry..I just took them as I could find them and suddenly realized I was getting excessive.  You are in my heart even if not on this page…

Mrs. Blumenschein Matriculates at Sixty

17 Replies

Mrs. Blumenschein Matriculates at Sixty

Enough with the babies. It’s time now for you.
Cease with the usual. Do something new.
For once be the player instead of the coach.
Let this school year start out with a brand new approach.
Before you’re a grandma, face your heart’s desire.
Matriculate college as others retire.
Sixty’s not too late to make use of your mind.
Create the life for which you have pined.
As your youngest departs to expand his knowledge,
pack up your own bags. It’s your own turn for college.

When I entered college in 1965, one of my fellow freshmen was Mrs. Blumenschein, age 60, mother of nine, who, when her youngest packed up for college, packed up and enrolled herself. She had long red tangled hair, the nicotine-stained fingers and cracked voice of a chain-smoker and a sharp mind. Graduating in four years with an A average, she became a graduate assistant in the English Department as she went on to get her masters. One form of discrimination rarely mentioned in this age of protest against racial, sexual and gender discrimination is ageism. Mrs. Blumeschein conquered that prejudice long before it ever became an issue elsewhere. So, here’s my tribute to Mrs. Blumenschein.

Prompts for the day are enough, baby, usual, matriculate and coach. Image thanks to Alonso Villa Ulloa on Unsplash, used with permission

The Groom Dances with Grandma

5 Replies

 

The Groom Dances with Grandma

She struggles to keep time as they circle ’round the floor,
her flushed face with its rosy hues signaling “no more!”
This dancing she once lived for has come to be a task,
whereas the problem once was whether any boy would ask.

Standing in the wallflower line, wishing for a fella,
whereas sixty years later, a chair and an umbrella
would serve to meet her wishes, for this dancing in the sun
at her grandson’s wedding has turned out to be no fun.

What she needs in her dotage is not cognate with the dreams
of those age fifteen fantasies that burst her at the seams,
spilling out her future hopes, sure they’d be the same—
that there would be no change of rules in this living game.

Memories of graceful maneuvers through the night
remembered at one’s leisure are a pure delight.
Yet all those youthful dreams of blithely swirling ’round the floor
have matured into her fantasies of sneaking out the door.

Word prompts for today are rosy hues, circle, dancing, cognate and umbrella. Image by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Memory Games

12 Replies

IMG_8176

Memory Games

Though memories are sketchy, those that remain are vivid—
mere scraps of joy or humor or times when she was livid.
No way to tell what snips of time her memory will nourish—
current relations lost to time while past ones live and flourish.

The mind does nasty tricks when it decides to misbehave.
It may leave us abandoned within its darkening cave,
or perhaps it casts a cinema only one can see,
drawing them into a world of dreams where they are free.

No one who walks through memory’s door can return to tell
whether it is heaven or a living hell.
Another trick of life that draws us fast within it,
forcing us to play the game without a way to win it.

Prompt words for today are jive, sketchy, relations and vivid.

Affirmation

32 Replies

IMG_3094

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

Femme Fatale

5 Replies

Image by Thiago Barletta on Unsplash used with permission

Femme Fatale

I must say the dress  she wore—that sexy little number
did much to rouse the bench sitters from their usual slumber.

They rooted and they murmured. Some stood to lift their caps
at the revealing nature of her dress—especially its gaps.

She did as much to ameliorate the boredom of their day
as all the other passersby who passed along the way,

causing some widening of some eyes, some laboring for breath,
but it is only rumor that she caused one codger’s death.

Some say they’d seen him earlier clutching at his chest,
so a contributing factor was what she was at best.

Prompt words today are rouse, root, labor, ameliorate and number.

Relaxed

11 Replies

BACK GARDEN1

Relaxed

The punch of youth deserted me a few birthdays ago.
My pace is not so rapid, my activity rate slow.
Though I’m really rather crafty at covering up my laziness,
the truth is the sharp edge of life has dissolved into haziness.

My fashion style has graduated from shabby chic and Goth—
loose batiks and rebozos that provide forgiving swath
to obscure a body settling into a comfort zone
that leaves room for a donut, popcorn or a scone.

I do the things I used to do, though in different proportions.
I exercise within my pool with minimized contortions.
My parties have grown smaller with the menus simplified,
and when I am out shopping, I am easier satisfied.

No longer do I seek out that perfect styling mist.
“This will do,” I soon decide, and cross it off my list.
I put off a few years ago my three nights on the town.
The nights I used to dance away, I love to lay me down.

Sorting through a milling crowd has become a bore.
My friends have dwindled to a few, but I enjoy them more.
Swinging in the hammock has become a meditation.
Looking at garden denizens a form of education.

Life filtered down is full of grace. I love its sway and hush.
Who knew that it would be such fun away from life’s mad rush?

Prompt words today are punch, youth, craft, birthday

Skinny-dipping in One’s Sixties

24 Replies

 

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.

An Aging Siren’s Lament

25 Replies

DSC00089

An Aging Siren’s Lament

I once was bewitching, beguiling and busty,
but now I’m decrepit, doddering and fusty,
making mountains of molehills and blocks out of chips
and adding them onto my thighs, calves and hips.

As I fall apart, I become more voluminous,
my eyes less dewy, my skin much less luminous.
I’m developing poorly, my aging less fine
than mellow old cheeses and whiskies and wine.

As my memory fades and becomes much less credible,
I’m less appealing and for sure less beddable.
I’m held together by trusses and braces,
Spanx and Ace bandages, spandex and laces.

Someone should just shoot me. (Botox, not a gun.)
I’d be more alluring and have much more fun.
But diets are tedious. Shots must be painful.
Of all of these cures, I’m purely disdainful.

I guess I’ll age gracefully, sip from its cup
greedily, admitting I’m giving up.
I’ll simply sit here inert on my fanny
and trade in the title of sexpot for granny!

 

Prompts today are fusty, bewitching, chip and mountain.

Short Story

7 Replies

Short Story

Have you built a final fortress behind the winding wall
so you need not deal with this crazy world at all?
Is your lofty Shangri-la an adequate escape
from the headlines of the day—the raw world’s rub and scrape?
Have you left behind the saga of this noisy world
to hide out in your quiet cave where you are snugly curled
in your Barclay lounger, an old cat on your lap,
your only excitement rubbing against its nap?

How the needles click and clack as you knit and purl,
remembering small triumphs from when you were a girl.
No need for social intercourse or charity or giving.
Each year you knit out a life that contains less living,
striving for an entity devoid of stress and trouble,
sealed up neat and tidy in your private bubble.
This is really living, you tell yourself each day—
loneliness the only price that you have to pay.

 

Prompt words today were lofty, escape, quiet and saga.