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.

From Vespers, Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment.I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes.Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here....All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds.

From ‘Allegro,’ T. Tranströmer

After a black day, I play Hayden,
And feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kings hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence...

I shove my hands in my Haydenpockets
And act like a man who is calm about it all

I raise my Haydenflag. The signal is
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

From The last things by Gavin Ewart

Of course there’s always a last everything.
The last meal, the last drink, the last sex.
The last meeting with a friend. The last
stroking of the last cat, the last
sight of a son or daughter. Some would be more
charged with emotion than others - if one knew.
It’s not knowing that makes it all so piquant.
A good many lasts have taken place already.

Poetry is not a code
to be broken
but a way of seeing
with the eyes shut,
of short-circuiting
the usual
connections until
lioness and
knee become
the same thing.