aging

I’m Listing

lillian19 Comments

Some days I feel as though I’m listing,
weighed down by too much news.
Hantavirus, gas prices,
John Roberts resurrecting Jim Crow,
taxpayer money gilding an extravagant,
exaggerated, excessive, exorbitant,
extraneous, bawdy ballroom
for Mr. You Know Who.

Perhaps a blooming list might brighten my day.
My favorite blooms then, in no particular order:
hyacinth, cherry blossoms, tulips, daffodils,
crocus, lilacs and *panties of the week.

Listing toward eighty now,
purple veined hands, crepey knees,
fading eyebrows, expanding girth.
All changes I can live with.
I can still dance the waltz,
twist lasciviously, bunny hop ridiculously
and show off my *bloomers
doing high Rockette kicks.

So the point is, listing at my age
is more than a poetic feat.
It should tell you I am alive and well,
not planning any time soon
to take a docile back seat!


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Bjorn from Sweden is hosting.

WORDS OF EXPLANATION:
1. The astericks on panties and bloomers. Back in the day, panties were called bloomers!

2. Panties of the Week were a very popular fad in the 1950s. You bought a 7-pack of girls underpants and each one had a day of the week embroidered on them!

3. The Prompt: Bjorn asks us to write a “list poem”. He says, “The use of lists in poetry can be very powerful. You can start with a list and expand around it. Maybe even your shopping list can be made into poetry by reflecting on what the list tells you about the season. The whole poem may be a list, but you may also use a section only as a list.”

So basically we’re to write a poem that involves listing. I had fun with this one!

Image is AI created on Bing Create.

Fences

lillian19 Comments

How do people learn to parent?
Do we learn it as we go?
Is it a task with diminishing returns?

We erect loving fences round our infants.
Envelop them in our arms,
nurture them at the breast,
cocoon them in swaddled sleep.
At varying degrees we watch, hover,
interfere or cheer, as they crawl, toddle,
run, stumble, fall and get back up again.
Fences open as we send them to school.
Teachers flick reins with encouragement
to lope, gallop, join the race, keep up the pace.
Soon fences disappear completely.
Children gone more than they’re at home.
Is parenting a conundrum?  
Love and attachment grow stronger every day
even as we encourage independence,
even as their days with us are numbered.
Suddenly they’re adults raising their own
as we look on from another place.
We hope the path they walked with us
was well tread, remembered fondly.
We relish our memories
as we wait for their muscle memory
and that thing called familial love
to occasionally nudge them
back into our sphere again.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Punam reminds us that in India, May is a month where there will be art exhibits across many cities. She provides us with several artworks that can motivate an ekphrastic poem, or we can be inspired by one of the following names of some of these art shows:
1. Nothing Twice
2. Chance Remains of Another Time
3. Open Fences

Photo is us with our granddaughter who is now 18! How time flies!

I Remind Myself . . .

lillian2 Comments

Goodness blooms this time of year.
Pushy crocus show off first
then tulips admire daffodil ruffles,
hyacinths invoke delicious inhales.
Trees begin to dress for the occasion.
Don magnolia flowers, cherry blossoms,
crab apple trees defy their name.
We shed coats, walk more sure-footed
on warming sidewalks and greening lawns.
Infants’ arms wave more freely,
cumbersome snowsuit padding gone.
Robins appear, geese begin to nest.
Mountains’ winter toppings melt,
cascade in waterfalls to brooks below.
Streams rush over rocks,
gurgling their spring symphony.
And I, I smile as I step outdoors
reveling in another year of life.

Metaphor Me

lillian11 Comments

Dandelion me.
Youthful glee in splashy yellow dresses.
All sunshine and skipping through fields!
But old age they say can be grizzly.
Those cubs, born hairless and toothless.
Grizzly cubs but not grizzly at first.
No pacifiers. Mother’s nuzzling enough.
Then playful to rambling to belly fat acquired
and hibernation needed. I always liked naps.
Or acorn me. Digging into soil, finding my own way.
Gangly seedling teenage years with
autumnal outbreaks. Cacophony of colorful
fashion fad flairs. To sentinel oak standing
with quiet grace. Am I there yet?
I still feel dandy and fierce. Dandy lioness am I.
Elderly dandelions’ delicate translucent skin
fades slowly until a passing by small child delights
in one puff from chubby cheeks. Giggles as seeds
soar on spring’s born-again breezes.
Dandelionalicious me with walks, hand in hand.
Stops along the way to collect bouquets of flowers
and skip rocks across the pond. With many smiles.
All the while acknowledging life’s delights.

NAPOWRIMO Day 25. Prompt: Write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line(s) to the image or idea with which you opened the poem.

DEDICATED to my dear friend, Lindsey. Wishing her well.

Metaphors used: comparing my life (anyone’s life) to a dandelion, a grizzly bear, and an acorn growing into an oak tree. Within the grizzly bear section, I ruminate on the meaning of old age. Had fun with this one once I decided how to approach it!

Photo taken many many years ago. And yes, it’s a dandelion in its old age!

Meandering Through Life

lillian15 Comments

I roam this curving shaded path.
Hopscotch through my youth in rompers
skinny legs, scraped knees, curly hair.
Naively sweet and unaware.

In my myopic teenage years
I roam this curving shaded path.
Blinders on, friends all important.
Time flies, motion undetected.

Parenting years, our sweet children.
Together we laugh and love as
I roam this curving shaded path
encouraging strong roots and wings.

Now approaching eighty years young
with less trail ahead, we rest more.
Your love, holding the light high as
I roam this curving shaded path.

Written for Meet the Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Laura asks us to write a Quatern. That is a poem of 16 lines, divided into 4 quatrains (4 stanzas, each with 4 lines). Each line must have 8 syllables. There must be a repeated refrain that is the first line of stanza 1, the second line of stanza 2, the third line of stanza 3, and the 4th line of stanza 4.
Photo from a vacation some years back.

Seasonal Reflections

lillian8 Comments

In the waning days of autumn
nature sheds its hilarity.
Crimson red, halloween orange,
and golden yellow leaves shrivel,
lose their vim and fall.
Farmers’ fields, stripped of crops
seem eeirly clold and barren.

I seek warmth, light and respite.
Candles lit, afghan wrapped,
mulled wine and book at hand,
I hibernate.
I am, afterall, a creature of nature.
Slowed by age
and sensitive to seasonal biorhythms.

Shared with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Time Passes: Petals Tell the Tale

lillian22 Comments

parched petals litter tabletop
tears cling to eyelashes
skeletal tree limbs crack
as blizzard careens from sky

sunrise announces joyful day
as cherry blossoms bloom
yes bedazzled by love
bouquet gifted, she smiles

seasons and emotions change
age wizens beauty
Your love,
her always

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting our Quadrille Monday and asking folks to write a poem of EXACTLY 44 words, sans title, and include the word “petals” (or a form of the word) in the body of the poem. A synonym will not suffice.

Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

Friends Over Time

lillian24 Comments

Time moves incessantly
     ambles as we stroll
     rolls as we revel
     cascades in times of joy
turning, flowing, always forward.

Time separates, even while moving forward.
Distance added to time.
Friends diverge to their own paths
amble, roll, cascade.
But true friendship transcends time.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Lisa is tending the pub today, as we return from our two-week summer hiatus to celebrate dVerse’s 14th anniversary! She asks us to include the word “turn” in our quadrille: a poem of exactly 144 words, sans title.

My poem today is dedicated to dear college friends, Brian and Cher. I’ve included a few photos from our friendship over the years….the last one is just this past Friday night. Brian and Cher spent 5 wonderful days with us….reminiscing, laughing, sight-seeing, and playing cards at the same card table we sat at with them 55 years ago! Can you guess which photo is from our college days? And which one is from 1974, when our daughter Abbey was born?

Aging . . . Poetically Speaking

lillian6 Comments

When I think of aging
visions of nature appear poetically,
ready to be written across the page.
But my hand tremor sets script askew,
not unlike a preschooler’s
first attempt at printing their name.

Nature’s brightly pink ruffled peony
once perkily perched, quite the showy thing,
gleamed amongst garden’s greenery.
Now droops beneath residue
of last night’s thunderstorm,
struggling to hold its bloom.

Newborn gangly foal tries to gain its footing.
Youthfully romps through riotously colored fields,
bluebells and golden columbine waving in the sun.
Years later, put to pasture,
stands swaying slightly, head down,
eyes clouded, wildflowers a dull blur.

And I myself, mark changes in my body.
Steps slowing down, sometimes falter.
Veins protruding on my hands.
I reflect more and more
on what was, and what is,
and what is to come.

Perennials dance in spring’s fresh air,
stand proudly through their season.
Then wilting, lie down to disintegrate.
But their stock is strong, their lilt not forever gone.
Perennials bloom again and again and again,
one generation gifting its beauty to the next.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Will be submitting for possible publication in the dVerse Anniversary Anthology.

Image by eetrinde from Pixabay

October 14, 2013

lillian5 Comments

Six minutes a widow.
The sun kept shining,
the clock kept ticking,
but your heart stopped.
Absolutely stopped.

I remember my screams,
ambulance sirens.
They rushed you away from me.
Ushered me into a private waiting room.
I waited for forever it seemed.

Then that humming, beeping room.
Monitor glowing with moving lines.
Lines becoming peaks and troughs and blips.
Shroud-like sheeted, eyes closed.
Your face obscured by ventilator and tubes.

My God, so many tubes.
Family somehow there, tethering you to earth.
Doctor talk. Jumbled words to me.
“. . . his brain . . .may not wake up…not the same..”
No. No. NO.

Forty-eight hours later
your eyes popped open, staring fear.
Nurse told you firmly, wiggle your toes.
Move your right hand, now your left.
Moments of sheer joy.

We came home end of that week,
you, the real you, cognitively you.
But we were changed forever.
We live life more slowly,
love more deeply,
thankful for every day.


Written for dVerse , the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Will be submitted for possible publication in their anniversary anthology.