midlife changes curled-up
forties are fiddlehead ferns
it doesn’t look like much
until it becomes unfurled
and once we get it open
things may break apart —
eventually nests unwind
but will we bear fortitude
to turn that new life into
something just as beautiful
and yet even more free
spiraling towards fifty?
age split a cherry
midlife is the pit
sweet and ripe surround
my eyes can’t see as well anymore
but my heart sees all the better
my ears have begun to fail me
but I hear the quiet budding of success
I move more slowly now
but have learned to be still with myself
my aching body is stiff and sore
but my spirit has never felt so fine
my memory is slipping
but I’ve got a firm grip on what it is to live
my head is going gray
but I have found all my true colors
I get out of bed earlier
but still have plenty of dreams
I live more softly
but don’t back down from doing hard things
my teeth are getting artificially replaced
but my soul is real and all my own
my bones are brittle
but my resolve is strong
I no longer bounce back
but continue to look forward
I tell the same stories over and again
but become a new me every day
I’m nearer to the end
yet I have only just begun
my youth is caked over
with heartache and pains
regrets and inflammations
and sudden calcifications
of ligaments and spirit
not-bothers and defeats
that went to my head
and bruises that take
too long to heal
cracked teeth and
why-tries and i’m-tireds
that which galloped
now rolls in ruts
my blonde has passed
to mousy and gray —
everyone i know
looks tired and frayed
sagging from the weight
of time and overbusy
and too much stuff
in too-big houses —
it’s too much life
and too little living —
no vitamines will fix this
freed pubescent girl
finally crawls out of time
into middle age
Now that I’m over the hill
I can see it’s just made of
skeletons of dead monsters
that were never really there.
But that past is no less high
and no less there, and I am
no less on the other side of it.
“Growing old… that dreadful moment when we first realize that we are ourselves no longer young. It is an extraordinary moment: pain, denial, rebellion, hopelessness. It arrives in many different ways. It used to come with spectacles — but nowadays the babe wears spectacles; sometimes it creeps upon us with a little stiffening of the joints; one does not run upstairs quite as lightly as one did. It may even reveal itself in the impatience that is felt because people do not speak quite as distinctly as they should — an impatience to which the younger generation rudely refers as deafness. These are gradual intimations that we are not as young as
“There are abrupt ones — especially there is the glance into the mirror some morning, after a sleepless night. Probably every woman over forty-five has known the start of astonishment and dismay that comes with that glance… The woman who has had this slight shock before breakfast glances at her looking-glass many times that day, and always with a growing comfort, for as the day passes things change; her face is more alert, her eyes brighten, her double chin is, somehow, firmer. No; it was only fatigue from a bad night;
—Margaret Deland, “The Wickedness of Growing Old,” 1905
fifty hit me
a ton of bricks
insult to injury
for some body
still on the floor
under the anvil
of forty-nine
At a certain point, some of us just sit down and watch the rest of our lives
my body’s lifelong dance with gravity
has turned to wrestling match
with each passing year
spirit becomes more asset
body, liability
Old Father Time fox-trots
across my golden locks!