Long Older Poems
Long Older Poems. Below are the most popular long Older by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Older poems by poem length and keyword.
One thing I’ve learned after being on this earth for a little while…
is how I don’t have to look very far
to see something that makes me smile.
On the beach the other morning…just before our walk was done
there…off to my left…I saw a father and his son.
The son in his 30’s or 40’s…
The father my age…perhaps a little older…but not much
As they stood there on the shore I could see their shoulders touch.
I saw the father…his hand trembling….with some affliction I’m sure he had
I saw his son bait his father’s hook, cast it into the ocean…
then hand the rod and reel to his dad.
When he felt his dad was steady….
the son cast his own rod and they fished together on the shore…
as they have done…I imagine…a thousand times before.
And then…for a moment…just a moment…for I knew it wouldn’t last
my mind took me on a journey…a journey to the past.
I saw the father and son…as they were so many years before…
both of them much younger…standing on the shore.
I saw the young boy…his hand trembling….anticipating the fun
I saw his father bait the hook, cast it into the ocean…
then hand the rod and reel to his son.
Next, I saw the father cast his own rod
and as they fished there shoulder to shoulder
I wondered if back then the father ever dreamed
they’d still be doing this when they were older.
As they fished together…coming full circle…
I watched the two of them for a while…
I tend to do this a little more these days
when I see something that makes me smile.
Have you ever been hypnotized?
I was always the one they led up to the stage from the audience.
I could be so easily hypnotized it was nuts.
Infatuated by it, I took some classes
Teaching me how to hypnotize others.
Dr. Hickman was teaching them.
She gave me a book.
Hypnotherapy by Dr. Irene Hickman.
I was not ready for this.
I thought it was a bunch of hooey.
I did not appreciate the book or her autograph.
Ten years later fate threw me into a hypnotherapy course.
I am now a licensed hypnotherapist. Wishing I had not
been so hasty.
I had thrown away the book.
Feel badly now, as Dr. Irene Hickman
Was one of three people instrumental in
Introducing hypnotherapy to the United States.
I was shocked when I took the course,
And learned that the woman who desperately
Wanted to intern me years earlier was one of
The pioneers.
She was a calm, quiet, older, eighty-year old who spoke softly….
And thus, the winds have driven roiling surf
To torture silent stones in times abyss
Raise froth upon the rise of tidal flux
As rippling sands dance snake-like on the beach
The gulls have ridden clouds to safer skies
Umbrellas breaking bonds are carried nigh
A swirling vortex gathers up the trash
As black suited surfers wash ashore
Storm warnings have been posted yet we come
To pay homage to those who went to sea
Who clung to wooden mast and battered rail
Or touched the doors of death ‘neath becalmned sail
So, does the beach ball drift on calmer seas
And older folk bathe only to their knees
Sand castle kingdoms dread the coming tide
As pirate ships dance in old childlike eyes
They messaged on backlit marginalia,
phones dimming as the night grew older.
After the fight, they pondered each other,
tested their feelings.
“I am still the same woman” She wrote.
He, drowsy and hung over -
“I have a list.”
He had listed the many reasons
she was so great to be with.
He mentioned those reasons to her.
“Thank you,” she said preening.
I haven’t changed, you have!”
He added some negative cons to his list,
then some more.
The list grew longer.
“I’ve made another list.” He told her.
She took this as a good sign.
“Yes, go on…”
A change would be good. He thought
but wrote:
“I love you just the way you are.”
Then he tore up the second list
and turned on a p..n video.
The face in the crowd
Walking through time
The church on the hill
That day
Etched forever in silent loathing
No word, no reason, long, long, gone
Fifteen years
The face, older
In the crowd
She wanted to scream at him
Just say something
She began to follow him
Watching as he walked into the graveyard
Stopping beside the solitary grave
Touching the headstone
Finally disappearing
She approached the grave
Reading the inscription on it
The name stood out
She kept staring at it
Recoiling in disbelief
The name and date
Fifteen years ago
The wedding day
It didn’t make sense
She began to study the name
Touching the engraving just to make sure
Looking around, searching for him
Her head spinning
Nothing made sense
Finally falling to her knees
The face in the crowd
The face in the crowd
Walking through time.
I LONG TO SEE
MY LOVER
SHE'LL BE MY
CHILDREN'S MOTHER
WE'LL GOOD TO ONE
ANOTHER
JUST YOU WANT AND SEE
LOVE AINT ALL THAT COMPLICATED
SHE'LL HAVE ME HUSBANDNATED
GRATISFACTION AND SATISFACTION
I GUARANTEE
I LONG TO SEE
MY LOVER
SHE'LL BE MY
CHILDREN'S MOTHER
WE'LL TALK AND
HONOR ONE ANOTHER
JUST YOU WANT AND SEE
CLEVER CONVERSATIONS
TALKING AND NEGOTIATING
I LONG TO SEE
MY LOVER
SOMEWHERE SHE WAITS FOR ME
ROMANTIC SUPPERS
AND SPECIAL EVENINGS
CANDLELIGHT AND KISSING
WE'LL SPEND TIME REMINISCING
JUST WAIT AND SEE
I LONG TO SEE MY LOVER
SOMEWHERE SHE WAITS FOR ME
*Image of 12 Fun Facts Tom Hanks by Hotbook.
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks
Mr. Thomas Jeffrey Hanks,
Passionately pursued his dreams by pulling pranks,
By smooth-talking fellow workers, this prankster cannot be found,
As Hollywood checked in, opened doors of opportunity and he's making ground.
2021 June 28
*1st Place*
A BRIAN STRAND JULY
~~Brian Strand: Judged 2021 June 30
*Tom and I formerly worked together in the mid to late '70s at the Oakland Airport Hilton Inn in the San Francisco bay area of northern California. I worked behind the hotel desk and Tom, who is a year older though we both graduated the same year, was a bellman there while attending Chabot College in Hayward.
We have a dog, and Snickers is his name.
Like the candy bar, his color is the same.
Our dog by now is six or maybe seven.
Living with him isn’t always heaven.
But as he gets older, he’s mellowed out,
Now he has a problem coming from his snout!
He recently developed quite the sneeze.
Along with it is something like a wheeze.
Our grandkids started worrying because
nobody knew that sound or what it was.
Was it a cough? We really could not tell.
He’d shake with it and did not sound too well.
The vet called it a sneeze – but in reverse!
We’re thankful that it wasn’t something worse.
We have to hide inside his food a pill
humans take for allergies – Benadryl!
Although the easy cure surprised me, I
was most surprised the vet bill was not high!
Aug. 1, 2021
For 'A Brian Strand RHYME ME' Poetry Contest
Spirit didn’t knock.
It entered through the back door—
a sliver of wind in my kitchen,
on a Tuesday so ordinary
I thought the sacred had forgotten me.
The sky was the color of old bruises,
and my hands were inside a basin of water
that had cooled too quickly.
The air held nothing.
And then it held everything.
No angel descended.
No flame spoke.
Just a silence so full it trembled,
and I trembled with it.
I looked up,
but nothing had changed—
except the way my breath hung in the room,
like it knew something I didn’t.
Spirit came dressed as memory,
but not mine—
the kind that belongs to stone,
to salt,
to wombs that never stopped singing.
It wasn’t ecstasy.
It was ache.
A blooming pressure behind my ribs,
as if I had swallowed a name
I was never supposed to say aloud.
I heard a voice that was not a voice,
say:
“Be still. You are already the altar.”
And suddenly,
the spoon I held in my palm
felt like a relic.
The dust on the windowsill
felt like the remains of prayer.
Even the fridge hummed
in the key of reverence.
No one else saw it.
Not the flicker in my hands,
not the thinning veil between
what is and what almost is.
I didn’t sleep that night.
My body buzzed with some remembering
older than language.
I cried,
but not from sadness.
It was the weeping of a house
that finally hears its own name spoken
after centuries of silence.
To be touched by spirit
is not to be lifted—
but lowered,
into the temple of yourself.
It is to feel your skin become a doorway.
It is to breathe with the moon’s pulse.
It is to carry stillness like a storm
just barely contained.
They will say
it was imagination,
a trick of emotion,
a moment of fatigue.
Let them.
But I know what the dust told me.
I know the shape my shadow made.
I know the voice that never left.
And every time I pour water
or touch a leaf,
or weep for no reason,
I remember:
Spirit doesn’t knock.
It enters
when you’ve forgotten how to ask.
And stays
in everything you cannot explain.
As I am heading into my “later years,”
Something amazes me.
It’s still me!
Gone is the fresh glow of youth,
The innocence and uncertainty.
It was replace with experience, wisdom,
Knowledge and kindness.
As I look into the mirror, I smile.
I like this “older Me.”
True, sometimes I scare myself
As I glance at the face reflected.
Eeks, who is this old woman?
With lines, and double chin?
But- it’s still me.
Now, I realize that everyone feels
The same way.
The young, adventuresome, trusting,
Energetic Me is still in here,
And always will be.
My hair may all turn white,
My step may slow down.
Yet, the true Me still
Wants to dance, run and jump.
I now discover more,
Find more joy in every day,
That nervous rush of my youth is gone,
But I like the Trade!
It’s still Me!