It's been a day where I feel my age. I'm sore as shit.
Yesterday evening, as my wife and I were taking our puppy for a stroll around the block, we noticed an older neighbor woman stuck on the snow piled in her driveway. My first impulse was just to keep walking, ignoring the situation. Of course, my Catholic guilt kicked in, and I went back to help the woman out. It took lots of shoveling and pushing with another of our neighbors before the car finally slid out of the driveway onto the street.
Today, my shoulders, arms and back have been objecting to my act of charity. It's taken a lot of ibuprofen to get me to this point, and I feel, well, ancient.
Sharon Olds on getting older . . .
35/10
by: Sharon Olds
silken hair before the mirror
I see the grey gleaming on my head,
the silver-haired servant behind her. Why is it
just as we begin to go
they begin to arrive, the fold in my neck
clarifying as the fine bones of her
hips sharpen? As my skin shows
its dry pitting, she opens like a small
pale flower on the tip of a cactus;
as my last chances to bear a child
are falling through my body, the duds among them,
her full purse of eggs, round and
firm as hard-boiled yolks, is about
to snap its clasp. I brush her tangled
fragrant hair at bedtime. It's an old
story—the oldest we have on our planet—
the story of replacement.
Yes, Olds is feeling her age in this poem. Her daughter, young and full of promise. Olds, going gray and counting her wrinkles. I've been a parent now for over 24 years, and I can state emphatically that nothing makes you feel older than being around your kids. My son just has to look at me, and I can tell what's going through his mind: You are so old. Stop trying to be cool. My five-year-old dog can do the same to me.
It's 9:33 p.m. right now, and today was daylight saving time. We pushed the clocks ahead by an hour, losing a hour of sleep. I had to take a nap this afternoon. I used to be able to stay up all night, take a 20-minute snooze, and then go to work and school without any problem. Those days are long gone. My brain is pretty much Jell-O by about 10 p.m.
I've earned every gray hair, wrinkle, and scar on my body. It's the price all humans pay for existing on this little broken world. We live, love, fuck up, and then go to a therapist for years to work through those fuckups. Life isn't about perfection. It's about being and doing the best you can.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about feeling the weight of his life choices, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
On this day in 1996, comedian George Burns, who played a cigar-smoking God in the movie Oh, God!, died. Write a poem where God or any Supreme Being (from a religion or mythological) is doing something you don't expect him/her to do. Maybe God is not only a creator, but a comedian. Maybe this Supreme Being has signed up for a Facebook account. Maybe God wants to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is another exercise where your imagination and the peculiarity and specific details in your poem will strengthen your work.
Meeting Jesus' Twin Sister at Taco Bell
on the First Sunday of Lent
by: Martin Achatz
Her feet glowed, I swear,
sandals wrapped around
the suns of her ankles and toes.
The teenage boy at the cash
register didn't look up
as she ordered a toasted
sausage breakfast burrito,
large Baja Blast Zero,
and cinnamon crisps.
The boy asked for her
name, and she said Janice
as she fished money out
of her coat pocket, put it
on the counter, stepped
aside to let me order.
The space she left for me
glowed, too, like a spotlight
on a stage, and I wondered
how her mother slept with
so much light in the walls
of their home, noon bright
at midnight. Struck dumb,
I stared at Janice. She put
a hand on my elbow, something
like understanding passing
between us, as if she'd just
heard my confession, absolved
me of lying to my parents
in high school about smoking
weed, tasting the flesh of all
those girls in the backseat
of my Dodge Aspen in college,
convincing my family to let
my sister die of the lymphoma
eating her brain.
The boy at the cash register
stared at me, annoyed at my
silence. Janice nodded.
I opened my mouth, felt my
heavy tongue move, heard
myself whisper like penance
I'll have what she's having.
