Approaching Sixty - by
In the Central Café
/ in Innsbruck,
/ a girl in a dark-blue dress
/ unlooses her hair from its clasp
/ so it falls to her waist,…
ageing
An Old Woman Cooking Eggs - by
That’s me in the painting.
/ My face smooth and brow clear,
/ for I do not worry over
/ what I cannot see.
To Margaret on a Monday - by
I saw you from my window, Margaret.
/ I was watching the seagulls swooping the sky.
/ The seagulls, I was telling myself, know
/ today…
Almorness - by
The tide is sidling up to Almorness, / unmet by those returned now north & west / away from here.
The Way - by
Friend, I have lost the way.
/ The way leads on.
/ Is there another way?
/ The way is one.
/ I must retrace the track.
/ It’s lost…
The going - by
‘The going is harder’
/ he advised me
/ ‘as one gets older.’
/ I didn’t believe him.
/ After all, he was old
/ and the old are like…
Winter in the World - by
The old lady struggles, footsteps careful, leaving shuffle marks in the snow.
/ No shopping bag, so maybe it’s church, and maybe…
Come and Go - by
He has chosen, far nearer the end
/ than the beginning, to live
/ where, every day, he can watch the land
/
/ come and go,…
Good Old Days - by
My neck, where love ran
/ Just under the skin
/ Is now an old rickety ladder to the brain.
/
/ My breasts, a full delight…
Pruning - by
I dock the dead, the damaged and diseased;
/ the gnarled and dry come tumbling from the heights
/ until I stand knee-deep…
In Retirement - by
Widowed of my own image
/ That shone from fellow faces
/ I watch from envious window
/ The men whose energies at morning…
Progress - by
There they are, widows of the professoriate
/ Tied to their frail routines, but not unfree
/ Wheeling their shopping zimmers on Market Street;
/ And…