In My Life's Peaceful Interlude
In My Life’s Peaceful Interlude
Midlife for me was a peaceful interlude.
After my children left the nest,
there had been a climax of sorts.
Poetry had come; it flowed to me.
I’d spend long afternoons in sun’s warm glow,
happily attacking sheets of paper with my pen.
In my life’s interlude, I felt formidable -
as though I could live another fifty years. . .
and all would be well.
How I wish this feeling were immutable!
One evening visiting a nursing home,
I beheld an elderly lady sitting demurely at a table.
Her image was a graceful sketch in grey
which imprinted itself indelibly on my mind.
As she sat, so well-composed, although her hands trembled,
I noticed her frailty and how brittle her old bones had to be,
yet there she sat, this aged woman, lighting up the room
as she smiled at me!
I have always felt life to be tenuous,
but examples of that are coming faster now
as my old friends and acquaintances vanish from the earth.
Trials of my own have now assailed me,
and still I write and wonder. . .
Should I somehow manage to live a century
as that old woman surely had done,
and should I become bereft
from the inevitable losses the future is sure to bring me,
might I sit and manage as gracefully as she
a brightly lit-up smile for a passer-by?
Nov. 3, 2017 for John Hamilton's 'Eight word challenge -5' Poetry Contest
Words used in the poem: 1. Brittle 2. Immutable 3. Formidable 4. Tenuous 5. Interlude 6. Sketch 7. Bereft 8. Demurely
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