aging

Birthday Week with Gramps

lillian13 Comments

She’d lived with her widowed grandfather since she was orphaned at twelve. He proudly walked her down the aisle when she married. Every year since, she’d returned to the cabin to spend his birthday week with him. They watched movies on VHS tapes. His favorites were the old ones starring Cary Grant, Spencer Tracey, or John Wayne.

This year, she’d brought the Harry Potter series on VHS tapes. They were twenty minutes into the first one when he complained loudly. “Wizards? This is ridiculous!”

She started to ask, “What does it matter that . . .”

“The stars we see are already dead. The ones we always watch. They’re in plots you can understand,” he harrumphed. “I’m gettin’ a beer and goin’ out to watch the moon. Seein’ a man up there is more real than this!”

She smiled, “Okay, Gramps. You win. I’m coming too.”


Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Dora is hosting and introduces us to Amy Woolard. She asks us to include the line “What does it matter that the stars we see are already dead” from Woolard’s poem, Laura Palmer Graduates, in our post.

Prosery was invented by dVerse: one line of poetry is provided and we must include that line, word for word, within a piece of prose/flash fiction that is 144 words or less (sans title). It’s the one type of prompt on dVesre, that does not involve writing poetry.

Image created in Bing Create.

It’s a Craggy Life We Live

lillian14 Comments

From this vantage point,
looking up, like looking back.
Contours evident.
Cracks, crevices, smooth edges,
veins streak across surface.
Planar sedimentary laminations
mark periods of sustained times.
Strength, resilience,
past layered upon past,
weathered but still tall.
Pulpit Rock in Norway
metaphor for life.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we’re asked to write a Quadrille (poem of exactly 44 words, sans title) that includes the word “contour.” Will also use this poem for the first day of NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, where the challenge is to post a poem every day in April!

Photo taken two years ago, on a Celebrity cruise where we visited Norway and took a boat trip down the Lysefjord and saw Pulpit Rock.

About to Celebrate 54 years . . .

lillian21 Comments

Dance with me
through these elder years.
New rhythms. Calmer,
slower yet upbeat,
even when adagio.
In sync still,
thankful for every day.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Mish asks us to write a poem that has something to do with dance. Video taken on our last cruise by a passenger who saw us dancing. About to celebrate 54 years on February 7th with the love of my life – my dancing partner through so many years.

Illusive Time

lillian27 Comments

My kaleidoscope memories,
colorful because they feature you and me.
Time before you
sepia toned, indistinct.

Like a deeply embedded sliver
tender to the touch,
fear festers
as you sleep beside me.

I need
longer days
and many many more,
to continue being us.


Written for dVerse where today it’s Quadrille Monday. Kim is hosting and asks us to include the word “sliver” in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.

Image by Dmitri Posudin from Pixabay

In the Style of Amber Rose Tamblyn

lillian40 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.

——–

Bright pink ruffled peony
once perkily perched,
quite the showy thing
gleaming amongst greenery.
Now droops beneath residue
of last night’s fierce thunderstorm,
struggles to hold its bloom.

Newborn foal,
gangly tries to gain its footing.
Youthfully romps through fields
colored riotously in wildflowers.
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 slow and sometimes falter,
veins protrude on hands.
News comes
of friends facing grave illness,
friends who leave this earth.
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
beneath winter’s winds and snow.
But their seed is strong.
The next generation takes their place,
for they are perennials
and their beauty continues.


Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, dear friend Sanaa is hosting. She asks us to write in the style of Amber Rose Tamblyn, an American actress, author, poet, and film director. Sanaa tells us Tamblyn’s “poetry is incredibly unique and descriptive. When asked where the power lies when it comes to writing, Amber Rose answered, ‘when it makes you feel every human emotion all at once.’” Sanaa asks us to create visuals in our poem and “aim to explore the human condition.”

Image by Tabea on Pixabay.com

We’re All Jacked

lillian36 Comments

Life spins round and round until
POP-GOES-THE-WEASEL
in our face.
Stuff it back in the box.

Keep turning the crank,
humming the tune
over and over until
POP-GOES-THE-WEASEL!

But this time,
the spring is shot.
So what to do
with us worn out Jacks?


Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Mish is tending bar and asks us to use the word “pop” or a form of the word, in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title.

Image from Falln-Stock 

You Became My Constant

lillian7 Comments

I was not there, the day everything changed.
When was that? When World War II ended?
When Einstein discovered relativity?
When nine-eleven crashed into infamy?

Or when Harry really met Sally?
Or when you simply ate a peach that summer day,
juice deliciously dripping down your tanned wrist.
Somewhere at that moment, I suppose a child was born.

Truth is, everything changes
with every breath we take.
Every pivot, every spin, every loping run,
something new becomes.

Nothing stands still. Except perhaps
sentinel mountains in the Norwegian fjords.
Yet even they are marred by subtle granular shifts
as we gaze up at their rugged rockface surface.

Like when we turned around
and our children became adults.
We noticed when their braces came off that summer,
but we didn’t register the daily shifts.

I don’t understand my image in the mirror.
I know it’s me. But how did it become . . . that?
Wasn’t it just yesterday, I was a brunette
and you introduced yourself to me?

Fifty-seven years later, we walk more slowly,
still hand in hand more often than not.
We’ve passed through so many seasons together,
the path is now longer behind than in front.

And so my love, in this moment
that shall also pass by all too quickly,
I simply must tell you.
I am thankful for every day.
I am thankful for you.

Written to share with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Saturday, March 18, dVerse will go LIVE with audio and video from 10 to 11 AM EST.

Folks from across the globe will meet face-to-face via Google Meet to read a poem of their choosing, and to visit across the miles.

Click here between 10 and 11 AM Boston time on Saturday, March 18th to join us — you’ll find an easy link that will open in your browser so you can meet everyone. Be sure to click on the SATURDAY link. Come and read a poem of your own OR just watch and listen. We’re a friendly goup and the more the merrier!

Photos: That’s George, the love of my life, and I our freshman year in college – many many years ago. Second photo is of us this past summer.

With Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

lillian40 Comments

“How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.”

Valentine’s Day,
definitely the time
to answer that query.

One, two, three, four . . .
forty-seven, forty-eight,
fifty-three wedded years.

Seven dogs we called our friends,
two children, nurtured and loved,
five wonderful grands.

Strolling Singapore’s orchid gardens,
admiring Japan’s cherry blossoms,
walking atop the Great Wall.

Meandering beside Lake Michigan’s shores,
through London’s fog, Alaska’s snow,
Bryce’s hoodoos, Yosemite’s trails.

From Iowa to Sweden to Australia too.
Easiest answer to that question?
So many ways over so many years.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, on Valentine’s Day, Sanaa is hosting and asks us to write “plainly” about love.

Photos top row, left to right: summer 1974, pregnant with Abbey, our first child; at the Great Wall outside of Beijing; in Japan enjoying the cherry blossoms. Bottom row: in an underground cave in Bermuda about 8 years ago; and finally, us here in San Diego just seven days ago, February 7th, celebrating our 53rd anniversary! Thankful for every day.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” — from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43.