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…
resilience
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,…
Old Age Blues - by
I don’t know what I used to know.
/ I don’t say that it isn’t so,
/ I’ve just forgotten. That’s a blow.
/ When you…
Let Me Not - by
Let me not be tempted
/ to talk incessantly about my illnesses;
/ the love of rehearsing them has become too sweet.
/
/ And more…
On the Slope - by
I cling to the railings as befits my station:
/ a senior person slipping slowly downhill.
/
/ The world no longer our oyster,
/ gone…
Old Age - by
I have, I think, most organs that
/ I started with. Some shaped by time
/ foreshortened, elongated, dulled.
/ I keep at bay…
On Being Eighty - by
Broad in the beam? More broad in sympathy.
/ Stiff in the joints? More flexible in mind.
/ Deaf on the right? New voices…
This is it (AJ) - by
This ground this dream these myths
/ This time this place this river
/ We broken people, this ugliness, this empty,
/ Not…
Lines Before Going - by
Soon is the night of our faring to regions unknown,
/ There not to flinch at the challenge suddenly thrown
/ By the great…
Daughter - by
There is one grief worse than any other.
/ When your small feverish throat clogged, and quit
/ I knelt beside the chair on…
Precious 10 Minutes - by
The GP stands at the door of his room,
/ shakes my hand, asks me how I am.
/ I always smile and say…
Logos - by
She walks on the charred ground, wings of smoke
/ from the bones of her home rising.
/
/ ‘Here was, there used to be,…