Sub/urban poetry

Time to fold up this tent and move into my/our deepest meditation zone

for I/we see we have exited our middle-life years

of high-anxiety, rush-rush-rush, fear we’ll die without accomplishing anything.

No more worries about being forgotten

which drove us to write our own origin stories, books and blogs.

We enter our later-life years, not yet our late-life or end-of-life years,

where we begin to harvest the fruits of our labours and investments in retirement,

disconnected from the younger generations,

leaving them to their own social anxieties.

Our path is individualistic in thought

even when it follows well-trodden social change in recent decades that led before us,

tromping on,

bulldozing over,

crushing flat uneven territory little touched by previous thousands of our species’ evolving generations.

We return to the sanitized suburbs of our youth,

securely cocooned,

locked in place like a jigsaw puzzle piece.

We hope you forget about us,

looking to others for inspiration and

distraction from daily drudgery.

We will remember your kindness

in the many “like” presses you made on our blog entries through the years,

your occasional comments much appreciated.

Our journey was prescribed for us at birth.

We have oft resisted but rarely strayed far from our clearly-defined destination.

We are domesticated, if not sophisticated animals,

comfortable in our gilded cages.

Thank you for your time and attention.

G’day, mates!

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As

As Monday ends, as the month of love draws to a close, we look up at the stars, at the only Moon we’ve known, and say we’ll always remember you as loving and kind.

But we move on, our projects taking center stage, not yours, no longer willing or able to support two loves of our life in our thoughts.

We concentrate on our childhood friend, our summer camp crush, our life partner.

We focus our nervous energy, which made dancing a “never know what’s going to happen next” surprise, on motorcycle riding.

Almost a decade of knowing you, supporting you, writing to and about you, was an emotional thrill ride all its own.

We thank you.

As the month of March approaches, we anticipate the joy of new adventures on our own, with and without our wife, just as we once anticipated seeing you again.

Guest post

Sunday Poem

The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There’s not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory,
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

W.B. Yeats
from The Last Romantic
publisher: Clarkson N. Potter, 1990