Jim Daniels: Strawberry
the final time I saw my mother
she was trying to find
the last strawberry on her plate
Alison Luterman: At the Jeweler’s Tent
I hold a string of amethysts up to my collarbone.
There are wrinkles on my neck now,
rings of crinkled flesh like tree-markings,
one for each lived year
Skye C. Cleary: Simone de Beauvoir recommends we fight for ourselves as we age
Elderhood is an opportunity to turn to ourselves, to be more responsive to our own needs, and less obliged to other people.
Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
William Butler Yeats: After Long Silence
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.
George Drew: On Another Epic Trip Around the Sun
I was sixty and I was dancing with Jan,
my brother’s Queen of the Line Dance wife
George Drew: The Poem about the Beatles (with video)
This is the poem about the Beatles that
I never wrote, and now there are more
yesterdays than tomorrows
Video: For Nonna Anna
As a young trans woman cares for her Italian grandmother, she discovers a tender bond in their shared vulnerability.
Gerald Fleming: Work
Today you’ll work in the room behind the barn. For years there’s been a stain on the sheetrock where the rain drips in, and the place smells of rot, and when the other day you yanked off a chunk of sheetrock, thinking might be rotten wood in there, thinking you’d maybe have to replace a few studs, you found, in that damp place, everything rotten.
Sydney Lea: How-to for Older Age
you won’t know that squall in the soul
as when you pondered your place in the world.
Whatever that was, now is.
Althea Romeo Mark: Sunrise in the Afternoon
I wonder if the crying is one of pain, of boredom or of frustration from being imprisoned in a body that no longer works or obeys her will.
Rachel Hadas: Screen and Dream
It wasn’t a dream, but the experience was dreamlike: across the computer screen, one day last week, a photograph of my father, sent by some well-meaning distant acquaintance, flashed without warning. In this black-and-white photo, Moses Hadas is sitting at the desk in his office…
Video: Maurice
Everything would be fine. Maurice had made up his mind. Pick a date, announce his retirement, sell the car, see old friends, and empty the garage. Then, die with dignity.
Vox Populi 