Tag: aging

On the Edge of Too Late

Once believed
not in circles
but in spirals

Life’s dance
continual movement
marking progress

Time’s measure
mocks such optimism
regret unavoidable

Excuses aplenty
none assuaging ambition
incomplete inevitable

Can I stop this spinning
rescue the untidy threads
weave an acceptable ending?

(Image my own)

Do Not Tell

No one told me,
in my haste to grow up,
that adulthood, awash
with responsibility,
would also be lonely

And, no one told me
that the days and nights
of sweating over lessons
would likely not lead
to the life imagined

nor that commitment –
the kind portrayed in movies –
does not exist – the word itself
bearing more substance
than the act, fickle as it is

No one told me that
motherhood would change
my reality permanently,
colouring it with unfathomable
pain and joy – such juxtaposition

And, no one told me that
every battle I ever arm myself for,
regardless of its justification,
is really a struggle with self –
inner demons the most menacing.

I never imagined that age,
with seismic force,
would alter my perspective so –
leave me barren and yet enriched,
enthralled with the ordinary
and unfazed by the rest

And, in the end, as I watch
the vernal rains announce renewal,
in the quiet of my solitude, I am
amazed and grateful for all
that this crazy, driven life has become
and that no one ever told me.

(This is an edited version of a poem published in April, 2019. Art my own.)

Lighting Call

Winter defines this stage,
this page, night descending
too early for my taste

If I catch a falling star,
can I shed the excess
layers of this confinement

Follow animal impulses
to a sunnier clime, restore
exuberance of noble youth?

Passion persists, intelligence
intact, just need a brighter
angle from which to reveal it.

(Lighting Call first appeared here January, 2019.
Linking up with Reena’s Xploration challenge: light. I
mage my own.)