I've been wanting to post on the new I.D. issued me from the University. Odd to see what 13 years brings (especially in the getting-older department). I'm off to a school visit today with my undergraduates (and wishing I had more time this long weekend to finish grading all their great work. Ah, but in the meantime, an Ode from one of the many writing prompts offered by our National Park Rangers.
Ode to Getting Old
b.r. crandall
I’m over myself, under the black clouds,
above where I was yesterday, below where I thought I’d be,
but I just listened to Kate Messner, it seemed the write time,
and I was inspired to write this poem…to set myself free.
My grandmother used to store swatted flies
in the wide mouths of her collected frogs, all ceramic,
It’s destiny, she’d laugh, a glass in her hand, red wine,
waving branches to clear her air (we kids in a hammock)
next to her, while she talked to the chipmunks, squirrels,
and dam cars over the bridge (red ones worth thirty).
I loved her journals, the pressed clovers and collected leaves,
& how she described my grandpa (most of his jokes dirty),
and never missed a moment to color her thoughts with ink.
I wasn’t the first to scribble my days away into odd verse,
I watched her on summer days, breathing in the reservoir,
stars bathing as they do,. She taught me to rehearse
for the later years (a curse?), how our bodies
remind us, like Shaw, that youth is wasted on the young.
The perennials are still blooming and I’m collecting the seeds.
As for the flower pedals? They’ve sing/sang/sung,
and I’m thinking about writing, the joy I love to teach,
(I used to be younger, too, my eyes on zest & play),
Now I’m aware of bones & the new pills I must swallow…
I’m over myself & under, finding grace while I turn gray.
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