Status Updates From Coming to Age: Growing Olde...

I picked this up at B&N, The title caught my eye. The poets and their poems selected by editors Hoberman and Hopley sold me on the book. The editors beautifully divided the poems into distinct "themes" which specically fill the minds of those of us who are experiencing growing older. As I am 68, I've found a unique book of poetry that captures life as I live it. A book to cherish. It's wonderfull.

I want to live the way you did,
preparing for next year's famine with wine
and music

Absence is louder than any sound.

you are still here,
Looking through my eyes
At what you have left,
Calling on me to attend to it,
To all of it in your absence.

While nothing can appease the first raw grief at a loved one's death, in its aftermath, poetry may offer a unique kind of solace.

The young, who have looked on dying,
turn back to the world, grown strangely
alert to each other's bodies.