April 29, 2012

Sunday morning, end of the week, or the beginning, depends on your point of view.  Today mostly clouds with the occasional spot of sun.  The birds have been quietly noisy, so many out, they sound like a lot of children playing in the distance, mostly glad sounds. There is still grass growing though I am thinking today it could use some water.  Nothing is quite as dusty as it was last year, and there is a lot more green a lot earlier this year.  The ligustrum is bloomed out now, the flowers fallen in a small shower of white onto the dirt beneath them.  The cane this morning looks more yellow than white and is still getting greener.  There is a breeze that is making everything sway gently but not hard enough to make any of the chimes sing.  One of the squirrels is lying on a branch surveying its kingdom, its head swiveling to see as much as it can.

This morning the poem is a strange kind of blessing, one of being nearly old.  One of my friends was complaining about older women being invisible, and Dawn was talking about the difference in attitude people have at her work between older men and older women.  There is something different about being an older woman.  Men don't try nearly as hard as women to erase the fact that they are getting older.  Look at actors, very few women can do much acting past their middle years, it takes a really strong will and a lot of talent, where men seem to get off easier.  If you don't believe me, just compare how many men actors get parts well up into their 70s or 80s with the women who are still making movies at that age.  I believe you will find a rather large gap there.  It could be the writer's fault, but mostly I think it's cultural.  And who knows, it may shift over time, but it will be some time coming I think.   Anyway, there is the poem:

The Joy of being nearly old

A poet who died
still loving it all, a poet
my age exactly, who died this year
on a table in a hospital in Texas
while they were jump-starting
his heart;

he said in the end that poetry
changes nothing in the world,
only poetry. But poetry, he told me,
is everything: your country,
your loves, your coffee cup,
the color of almond blossom,
the indelible touch of a lover,
the sky at the end of your street.
And then his heart gave out,
that tender muscle: it was poetry,
needed a lighter touch.

He said, all sleepers are babies,
in our sleep we become young again.
I watch you sleep, then ardent upon the stairs,
going down fast like a young man,
carrying your fragile heart out into the street
like a blown rose.

The world can’t see us.
We are too old to be noticed:
nobody watches us pass.
The nearly old live cloaked in privacy.
A man and woman old enough to be
grandparents. A poet who died
broken hearted and joyful.

Alone again in a corner of a café,
invisible, crazy with joy. Oh, the taste
of coffee! The sunlight
of this morning, this one day,
Sunday, when the dancers are all
out in the street;
what can I say but that it’s huge,
the joy of the nearly old.

Rosalind Brackenbury

And yes, no one notices, we live cloaked in privacy, the young pass us by on the way to their lives.  Poetry is nothing, and everything for what else do poets have to write about but everything in the world, all of it, the terror and the beauty, the extraordinary and the daily life, one extreme and another, and all the things we see every day.  I really do not need the notice of the world, if I continue to notice the world itself.  For me, I hope when I go I go in that manner, broken hearted and joyful.  That I will die living my life the way I wanted to live it, that the joy will have never ceased, that it will still be huge and filling up every day with all that is ordinary and sweet.  So, I think this is as good a blessing as Sunday can get, someone writing with love about a friend, about sunlight in the morning, about all the huge joys of being nearly old!  And living to tell of it!