Tree Envy
Instead of dreary gray strands
threading subtly widening paths
around my head,
I want blazing red
for my autumn color,
interspersed with patches of
can’t-peel-your-eyes away yellow
and clusters
of an orange so perfectly sun-toasted
it holds its own as an independent hue,
not remotely a blend of the other two.
I want the colors to burst
out all at once,
so that people I meet
will feel a catch of breath
at the splendor,
the glorious culmination of my maturity.
Since we’re all pondering the passing of time tonight, here’s a poem I wrote about aging, followed by some musings.
**
The Grottos of My Face
Lines I expected, around
the eyes and mouth, a deepening, settling
in of my features. This is how I aged
in my mind, at twenty, when I thought of aging
which wasn’t often, but enough
so that the image held fast, is there still
decades later, when I hit the snooze
each morning, until the second alarm
propels me through the shower
to the mirror, comb in hand. The third alarm
is the surprise that meets me there
new every day: the grottos
of my face, the shifting of the landscape.
No steady etching, as from
the river time is supposed
to be, according to the poets I’ve read.
Now I begin to see that age
is not a settling but an upheaval
unpredictable, seismic.
**
For most of my adult life, my appearance has been deceiving. I’ve looked younger than my actual age. Once, when I was in my early twenties, I was checking out books about writing from the library and the lady behind the desk asked “Are you hoping to be a writer when you grow up?” Umm.
I got ID-checked for 21-and-over activities right up to about age 40. But after age 45 or so, it the years started catching up with me and it seemed I could tell a difference in the mirror from one day to the next. I remember the morning I woke up with jowls. It was like having one of those tricky balloon mortgages where people float along complacent for years and years with their manageable payments, until suddenly one day – boom – they owe tens of thousands of dollars all at once.
I’m 51 years old now and I look it. I have a couple of gray streaks in my hair. I don’t plan to dye it, as I know myself too well to entertain the idea I’d ever keep up with it. Besides, I like gray hair, and the shade of gray I’m getting goes well with my blue eyes. I have creases in my face and the newest development is turkey neck.
I tell myself I’m okay with it. There’s nothing wrong with looking my age or being my age. As Sarah Silverman put it, about people mocking her for being “old”: “I feel like your joke is that I’m still alive. My crime is not dying.”
For the most part, I don’t think about it much. I’d be lying if I said I feel like I have as much energy as I did fifteen years ago. Yet, I have hung drywall in the not-too-distant past. I’m not exactly decrepit. Also, I haven’t even gone through menopause. That’s right — my husband and I still have to be watchful not to pull the old Abraham and Sarah routine and produce an infant in our twilight years.
There are times I let it bother me, and those times generally hang upon the words of someone else. Those times I worry that I look even older than my age. (Though, what would be wrong with that?) Then I wonder if it’s because we have constructed such an artificial idea of what aging looks like in our society. Do I really look older than 51, or is it that people have no concept of what an undyed, undisguised, unreconstructed 51-year-old looks like?
You know how to make a woman feel old and feel bad about it? Patronizingly call her “young lady.” This happened to me twice recently. The first time it was a waiter, and he looked to be quite a bit younger than I, so I’m going to forgive him and allow that he has time to learn the error of his ways.
The second instance was a grocery store clerk, who appeared to me to be around ten years my senior. He not only greeted me with a hearty “How are you today, Young Lady?” (emphasis not mine), but he also instructed the bagger not to fill my bags too full because they would hard for me to lift and asked if I had anyone at home to help me unload them. Good grief. I know I was short on sleep that day, but did I really appear a full 100 years older than my actual age? I overruled him on the bagging, telling the woman she could fill them pretty full because my canvas totes are sturdy. Then I answered his question, “No everyone else is at work or school right now, but I’ve recently been hanging drywall, so I think I can handle a few sacks of groceries.” Either I put him in his place or he assumed my visions of hanging drywall were a product of my senile mind.
I nearly turned around as I was pushing my cart away. It occurred to me to tell him, “Those tampons I just bought? They’re for me. I still ovulate.” I stopped myself, though.
As a girl, I always responded to assumptions about what girls couldn’t or shouldn’t do with a “challenge accepted” attitude. This girl climbed trees higher than the boys did. This girl loved math classes and not so much home economics. This girl was simply herself, whether or not it fit the social narrative or was considered feminine. I want to hold onto her when it comes to age. I want be the woman in her fifties who is okay with being in her fifties. Instead of trying to pass for younger, I want fifty and then sixty and seventy, and beyond to be acceptable and not narrowly defined.
If I ever do dye my hair, I’m pretty sure it will be purple.
Here in the middle of the U.S., we just passed the frost date. So it’s time to plant. Here’s a seasonally-inspired poem I wrote:
“Here it is,
The start of my first garden,”
she tells him.
Two dozen flat seeds
the color of milk, round with a point,
pour from a paper packet.
He wants to know what else she plans to plant
other than bell peppers.
She hasn’t decided yet,
but thinks it will be wonderful
to raise her own food.
She’ll cook more from scratch,
maybe even learn to can.
Gardening is great exercise;
she knows she’ll lose weight.
She hopes to figure out that sewing machine
she picked up at a garage sale
to make her own dresses.
Who knows?
She may need maternity clothes soon.
Healthier living should improve their chances.
At least she thinks so.
She wants to know what he thinks.
He thinks it seems like a lot to expect
from one little handful of seeds –
to grow a whole new life.
**
This poem originally appeared in “Mid-America Poetry Review.”
It’s National Poetry Month, and once again, Missouri is experiencing spring storms and flooding. I wrote this poem a few years ago, after driving through a small town that frequently floods and had been hit particularly hard the year before when the Missouri River overflowed its banks.
*Missouri River Town
In the last block before
The capricious water
A parade of houses on stilts
But no Uncle Sam hats
Or juggling pins spinning
Dour faces on most
Gray at the edges
Permanent five o’clock shadows
From silt slopped
Around the bottoms
Except
One bright countenance
Costumed as the canary
Emerging from the coal mine
Fresh painted optimistic yellow
The show goes on
*This poem originally appeared in Well Versed.
Here it is mid-April and a good chunk of the country is freeezzzziiiinng. That Laura Ingalls Wilder book, “The Long Winter” is going to need to be renamed “The Longish Winter” now that there’s this one to compare it to.
But I’m soldiering on. I’m participating in the 30 Days of Biking April challenge by walking every day and calling it 30 Days of Walking. I’m participating in National Poetry Writing Month, informally, by writing a poem every day but keeping most of them to myself instead of linking to the official site. I guess I have a hard time conforming or something. Which is a segue to a poem I am going to share.
I hope to start an uprising, a rebellion if you will, called “Kick Winter Out of April.” Here’s the manifesto.
Mid-April Rebellion
Fine. I’ll hold off on planting vincas
but I won’t succumb to a parka.
The wind might chap my skin
but I won’t pretend it’s winter
when the calendar’s shown spring
for weeks. The hyacinth
and magnolia stand with me
in solidarity
if not heartiness.
Their blooms aren’t the best
this year, yet they make their stand.
I, too, go forth as planned –
no coat, no scarf, no hat.
Gooseflesh? Shivering? I’ve had worse than that.
I will not concede. My arms are bare!
I declare spring. So there!
I was sorting through some of my poems the other day, and came across this one I wrote several months ago. I know it could use some more polish, but it seems always sadly timely. It was based on a newspaper headline.
Teen Dies in Shooting
Teen Dies in Shooting
and mothers who read the headline
die inside a little more
from the combined effects of this
and child soldier documentaries
along with
Young Lives End in Car Wreck
Oh my children, let me go with you
everywhere to hold your hand,
throw myself in front of the gun,
hide you from the recruiters,
grab the steering wheel
Let me never lay myself down to sleep
lest something evil should happen
while I’m not keeping watch
Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’ve been busy writing my obituary. Okay, that’s an inappropriate joke – as referenced in the poem below. But really, I was writing my own obituary recently. I hope to have many more decades to polish and edit it before it needs a final version.
It’s one of those self-discovery writing exercises. Write your own obituary. So, here’s the first draft of my response to the prompt.
At My Grave
At my grave, remember me
for my morning grumpiness.
Think about how socially awkward
I could be in crowds, sometimes fleeing
to hide in a restroom stall
when the pressure to make small talk
became too much .
Don’t forget my problem skin
or the perpetual spilling of food on my clothing.
I’ve heard tell I was a toddler who bit –
may as well include that, too.
Remember my poems and stories.
Remember I loved my children more
than was fathomable.
Remind them how I stayed up all night
caretaking when one of them was sick.
Then recall the time I threatened
to return my kids’ Christmas presents
to the store and spend the money on myself.
Remember when I shared my picnic lunch
with the hungry man in the park.
Remember I always mislaid my glasses.
I got lost on every road trip.
I strove to be kind.
But I cared a little too much about being liked.
I kept my word when at all possible
and didn’t give it if I thought I couldn’t follow through.
Don’t recall my endless patience; I didn’t have it.
Repeat some of my witticisms,
while keeping in mind I had a hard time knowing
when the situation made joking inappropriate.
Look back and notice I accomplished a lot
by flying under the radar of naysayers.
Speak of how I was complicated
and some days that was lovely
and some days infuriating.
Don’t airbrush my life.
Remember all of me.
My husband grows sunflowers. I write about them.
Sunflower or wheel of life?
Sunflower or large hypnotic eye?
Staring into the middle of the
Seed swirl pattern
You could be sucked to the center
Of the universe.
Sunflower or sun?
I like to eat, probably a little too much, and sometimes the wrong things. But some comfort foods are so…comforting. One even inspired a little poem.
Ode to a Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Comfort on a griddle
That’s what grilled cheese is
Golden toasted warmth
Full of the forbidden
Things that make you feel so good
Salt and butter and fat
But it’s solace that sticks
To your ribs, the next best
Thing to a hug from your grandmother
A grilled cheese sandwich is the
Stolid best friend of the food world
Securely there, always, unchanging
Sometimes this bare thought is enough
I could have a grilled cheese later
If I feel the need
So far, I’ve missed only two days in my quest to write a poem per day in April. I decided to try my hand at a sonnet. Here’s the result:
Peonies
They seem quite tentative at first, their stems
So slight, peek out for a looksee, an inch
Or two as if unsure whether their gems
Are something they want to share or pinch
Back for themselves alone. Each day they stretch
Forward, looking stronger, more confident,
Till their intent appears to be to fetch
The sky, and they raise tight fists, defiant.
Guarded against the ant and butterfly
They keep their blooms constrained, bound close.
Soon their inhibitions will burst; unshy
They will compete with the lily and rose.
Vibrant, voluptuous blossoms will flare,
Then bow down with beauty too heavy to bear.
Nomadic Noesis 