Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying
Chana Bloch: Memento Mori
Unblessed in a downburst, I lost
my leafy summer, my lovely,
my crest, my crown.
Sydney Lea: Before the Operation
The surgeon assures my wife and me:
“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”
How did age come on with so little warning?
I woke up in tears early this morning,
then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.
Sandy Solomon: Reading
The pasts, the past perfects: each sentence
a forest pool shining with borrowed,
broken light
Miriam Levine: They Call It Menopause
my brain
lit up with fantasies in
which I was dominant, a top,
not on men but women.
My thrusts were cruel.
Robert Cording: Reading Poems with David
Over the phone, David begins to read
and Mary, in old age, in a nursing home,
returns to life in David’s voice, voicing
her words, her questioning
of her own bafflement
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Leaving It There
I stop weeding, stand still a while, hands on hips,
because it’s back again — that feeling of elation
tangled with grief.
Sean Sexton: Meditation Upon Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux
See the plastic screw-capped container of
Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux, left
by the man summoned to tear out a wall
of our bathroom closet
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 18 & 19
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws
And make the Earth devour her own sweet brood
Video: Parkinson’s Together
For a long time, I had been wanting to create a series of portraits of my husband, who is living with Parkinson’s disease. Portraits where I honor Hal as a person – his strength and his vulnerability. And portraits where I express how it feels for me to be both a witness and a care partner in this.
Paul Christensen: A Diary of Winter
The cold came in silent as an owl. The fences stared out at the clenched landscape with gaping eyes, unlocked gates, a path already flattened out in anticipation of the coming snow.
Barbara Crooker: Late Painters | Matisse
When his hands could no longer hold a brush,
Matisse turned to paper and scissors, “painting”
with cold metal carving heavy gouache
shearing shallow reliefs.
Alice Friman: The Road Not Taken
I stood at the window
leaning my head, there
where the glass was cool
and looked out at the trees
bare now in January
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 73 & 74
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
