midlife

Realm of sorrow

“Another call from the spiritual universe is to the realm of sorrow. We are not good for much until our hearts are broken. I know of no more pathetic object in time than a man or woman who has come to middle life, still heart-whole. It seems as if they had been overlooked or forgotten in the great curriculum of life.

“Sorrow cleanses our vision of misty humors, restores our spiritual myopia, so that we get a clear, long-range outlook upon the verities, the imperishable substances of the inner life.

“He has lived poorly who has come to mature years and has not been touched by world-pain; who has not heard the sighing and the groaning of the millions; who has not at least stepped back a little way into the awful shadow of the world’s spiritual sorrow; known something of its shame and agony for sin; its terrors of an avenging conscience; its fear of angry gods; its shivering dread in presence of an unknown eternity.

“Unless called now and then into the stillness and shadow of this common experience of sorrow, how would we ever be healed of our folly for the getting and having of things? What ministry of consolation and strength could we have among the sinful, the suffering, and the broken-hearted!”

—Rev. James H. Ecob, D.D. (1844–1921), “The Call of the Universe,” sermon, 1904

Spiraling

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?

Terri Guillemets

See me, hear me, I am fifty.

the world may see dried-up and irrelevant —
they may not even see me at all —

LOOK!  i’ve re-blossomed with beautiful new petals —
strength, focus, perspective, poetry, silver wisdom —

i am roaring out all that i have held in,
taken on, and put up with — for all my life —

i roar for myself and for all women
i roar at the top of my lungs with all my midlife rage —

LISTEN!  no longer can i do it all, nor do i want to —
i may be getting old, but also i am brand new —

Terri Guillemets

My heart sees all the better

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

Terri Guillemets

Fading out

syl·​la·​bles in my life
i cannot utter anymore
with the grace of youth
i stutter with freedom
and slur in wild love
words that once made
sense now are blind
faith doesn’t see and
hope rarely speaks
i’ve never needed you
to spell it out for me
the echo of emptiness
calls out like the sea
ebbing flowing waving
crashing shoring up
a million tear drops
whisper gently into
the gossamer of years
winds blow away our
comforts of home in
a smoke of memories
lost childhood remains
both here and gone
audible and sadly silent
echoes of those poems
voice words that sound
exactly the same but mean
something entirely different

Terri Guillemets

Battery

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

Terri Guillemets

Changing

I used to love leaves changing
falling off the trees, being blown away
to wherever leaves go — but now
after fifty gorgeous autumns and winters
in anthropomorphized fears I wonder:

What if they don’t come back?
what if they’re not strong enough
or reborn or determined enough
what if the tree has just had enough
of storms and harsh seasons
and it’s ready to leave things be
comfortable now baring itself always
without even bothering anymore
maybe it’s too tired to keep blooming
or perhaps green suddenly annoys it
the burgeoning whippersnappers
flaunting verdant youth and beauty.

What if this has been the final fall
because what if I can’t spring back up
and what if I’m a bare branch forever?—

Terri Guillemets

That dreadful moment

“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 we were.

“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; not age, oh no!”

—Margaret Deland, “The Wickedness of Growing Old,” 1905