I have been searching

Old Woman

and I find her
in
mySelf

Daughters of Copper Woman, Ann Cameron

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m beautiful now,
beautiful in ways I never was in callow youth …
On fire now with the violet fire of soul speak,
treading a lighter path with a brighter spirit.
·
Sparking pink tourmaline, green jade, amethyst.
Blue sapphire flashing through the cloud of my being,
shooting stars in a cobalt sky of my heart.
I shed the pyrite, lead, hematite, the heavy, the dross.
Lost in a whisper of indigo dreams,
like a gray sparrow feather –
I float through Eternity,
a fragile-strong willow-wisp of joy.
·
In case you haven’t noticed, I am beautiful now,
beautiful in the way of all young women in that
once-upon-a-time when they were old.

© 2019, Jamie Dedes; photograph Beautiful Old Lady from Darap (Sikkim) Village courtesy of Sukanto Debnath from Hyderabad, India under licensed  Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0 Generic.

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

An old poem shared today, somewhat rewritten in honor of the soon-to-be celebration of my sixty-ninth year. I may be a minority, but I find old-age gratifying.  It some ways, life is easier and things are certainly clearer than they’ve ever been.  How about you? What are your thoughts on aging? Tell us in your poem/s.

Share them on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme are published on next Tuesday.

 No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published. 

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.  

Deadline:  Monday, February 11 by 8 pm standard.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

48 Comments

  1. I’m Not Done Yet by Julie Standig

    I lost my ovaries a week ago:
    no, they were not misplaced,
    like my keys, cell phone and eye
    glasses. They were unruly
    so, like that bad student years ago,
    they were removed. Don’t miss ‘em.
    Don’t need ‘em.

    Heads no longer turn when I walk
    down the street,and when I meet
    my daughter on Columbus, the waiter
    barely takes my order, but quickly
    knows to hand me the cheque.
    I expect it.

    I’m the oldest woman at work.
    My earrings don’t hang as long,
    my heels are not too high,
    and my hair is quite short.
    I wear pants, and if they’re tight
    is more around the waist.

    But I love nights filled with music,
    wine and friends. Amber necklaces
    and oversized rings that still slide
    over my knuckles.
    Words are comrades, still, and so far
    they have not deserted me.

    The lines around my mouth and
    creases at my eyes, I wear like medals.
    Not for bravery, or a war that was won.
    I can’t win this war and I know it.
    I have lost, I miss, yet I have no regrets.
    Beware.
    I’m not done yet.

    Like

    Reply

  3. Hello Jamie! I have a few responses to your prompt this week. One new poem and two older ones. Here is the newest one:
    https://iidorun.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/chive-on-a-limerick/

    This is another short fun haiku about getting grey hair:
    https://iidorun.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/fighting-age/

    This one one is more somber. I wrote it for my parents, a take on seeing them age:
    https://iidorun.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/details/

    I can’t remember if I have posted the latter two for your prompts previously (I blame the poor memory on growing older! 😂😂). Feel free to disregard them if so!

    Hope you had a good week! ~ Irma

    Liked by 3 people

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  4. Come,
    see me now.

    I am, the wind in your sails
    when storms cause you fear,
    I am, the love on your skin
    when complexion gives in,
    I am strength in your bones
    as your bones become thin,
    You will know me by sight
    when your sight isn’t clear,
    When darkness is near,
    You will deny any fear.
    I am the warmth
    of your Sun.
    and the light
    of your Moon.
    I am everything
    you know,
    I am everything
    you knew
    Who am I?

    I am you.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. Girl, my little pearl

    Girl, my little pearl
    you swirl in golden waters
    when you wear the highest heels
    when you show your slim body
    when you put on that lovely dress
    when you wear that perfect make-up
    when you exhibit those expensive earrings
    when your fingers and toe nails are so carefully painted
    when you completely remove all your hairs
    (except those on your head)
    when your hair is dyed accordingly
    (never forget to dye it when you grow older,
    you should always look younger)

    Girl, my little pearl
    you still want to swirl in goldern waters
    when you exhibit those piercings and tattoos
    though they are not still enough,
    so you will want to have some more, perhaps
    some botox and breast size operations too.

    And girl little pearl says:

    I do not want to wear high heels,
    they’ll ruin my feet and back forever.
    I was not born with a slim body so
    why should I want to have it?

    I do not want to wear that lovely dress,
    it’s terribly uncomfortable, unpractical,
    has no pockets and it’s too cold now,
    so why should I wear it?

    I do not want that make-up made of chemicals affecting my health.

    They always want to sell
    and so they never tell.

    The same with nail polish. I do not want it
    unless I buy these things at the organic shop
    just in case I changed my mind.
    I do not have earholes for earrings.

    Why does almost every girl have them
    to mark their gender as soon as they’re born?

    My mum has those earholes and wore once
    some unexpensive pair of earrings, bad metal,
    and ended up with red skin, red spots and allergy.

    No, I do not want earholes to mark my gender differentiation.
    I want to choose if I want them or not when I grow up.
    As for my hair and its natural color,
    I am perfectly satisfied, well, perhaps
    some streaks to highlight a bit of color
    together with shades of greys and whites.
    I want to look my age, why younger?
    I am getting older and have grey hairs.
    So what? Will I be less of a woman
    if I don’t dye my hair anymore?

    I refuse irreversible things
    like piercings and tattoos.
    Some other women and men
    may like them very much.
    Perhaps they’ve been the luckiest ones
    who had no health problems so far
    after piercings and tattoos
    marked their bodies
    forever.

    I do not want this on my body
    I do not want to be obsessed by esthetics
    I do not want to do something just because
    it’s fashion, everyone does it.
    I do not want to be who I am not
    I want to be myself
    I want to be appreciated for who I am.
    And if somebody wants to love me
    I’ll say, please, look first at my inside
    and then you’ll be able to decide.

    I am no girl, little pearl
    to swirl in golden waters
    I am simply who I want to be
    now you just take me or leave.

    (c) Marta Pombo Sallés

    (link to this poem on blog: https://momentsbloc.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/girl-my-little-pearl/)

    Liked by 4 people

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  6. “A Dying Light”
    (Raanana, July 14, 2017)

    Once when your light was at its zenith
    We could see the possibilities of poetry
    And now, and now,
    Your light is swollen and bloodred
    As it sinks below the crags of the far horizon
    We would not venture to explore,
    But even in the dying of your light
    And the cold night that it portends,
    You show us the way we all must tread
    Through dreaded mindscape
    That leads us lemminglike to fall free
    Through the nothingness of nonexistence.
    Though you would bid me follow you
    Showing me the beauty here
    Or the danger there,
    You can only point at them
    For words have deserted you,
    Adjectives no longer describe
    Nouns no longer are
    Verbs no longer act,
    And time itself was ever only deceit.

    (c) Mike Stone

    Liked by 6 people

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  7. “Retirement”
    (Raanana, April 30, 2017)

    We sat at the kitchen table
    The two of us as we did most evenings
    Her eyes tear-brimmed.
    I reached over and touched her arm
    Why? I asked although I knew.
    She had retired just a few months back
    But I had kept on working
    Til now.
    We’ll turn into a couple of old people
    It’s the last chapter of our lives, she said.
    Both of us turned around and looked at Daisy
    Snoring softly from her mattress
    As she does most days now.
    Neither of us could imagine life without her
    But I sensed my wife’s sadness
    Spilling and spreading out towards me
    And I promised her
    Wherever we’d go
    We’d go together hand in hand
    Til time’s far-flung end.

    (c) Mike Stone

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  8. “Wisdom”
    (Raanana, April 4, 2017)

    And in the end
    They’re right, you know,
    The Hindus and the Buddhists:
    All life is illusion
    Cut adrift from the shores of reality
    With a logic of its own
    Like the shells on the beach
    That my mother remembering
    When she was a little girl
    Picked up and put to her ear
    And heard the sea in them.
    This was the wisdom they talked about
    Sitting around the fires
    Toothless grins under a full moon,
    A wisdom that is not a wisdom,
    At all.

    (c) Mike Stone

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  9. Scorched Bones

    Gathering thoughts
    of remembrance
    Time stood still.

    My kind eyes
    Muddied by a world
    Full of hate,
    We see everyday.

    This is not
    Where I want to be
    This is not
    What I want to see.

    My gentle, trusting
    Nature being worn
    Away by the news
    The confusion I see.

    This is not
    Where I want to be
    This is not
    What I want to see.

    Beauty dying In front
    of me not naturally
    But gradually, and
    strategically on course.

    This is not
    Where I want to be
    This is not
    What I want to see.

    I and my friends
    losing Grace, misplaced
    Days dwindling by
    Shortening time.

    This is not where
    I want to be
    This is not what
    I want to see.

    Gone is the wonder
    Gone is the trace of
    Smiles erupting
    on this aging face.

    This is not where
    I want to be
    This is not what
    I want to see.

    God give me grace.
    When the loving warmth
    Of the final fire
    scorches my bones.

    This is not where
    I want to be
    This is not what
    I want to see.

    Liked by 5 people

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  10. “Trembling Hands”
    (Raanana, October 8, 2016)

    My hands,
    I look at them now
    Trembling
    As they are wont to do
    And I wonder why
    They do,
    My hands.
    My father’s hands trembled too,
    More toward the end,
    How I loved them,
    His hands.
    I think maybe they know something I don’t know,
    My hands,
    That starlight trembles in the night
    From distance and the coldness of it,
    That strings on violins tremble
    From Sheherazade’s beauty,
    Or remind me how my vulnerability
    Lets me listen to your heartbeat.
    O captain, my captain,
    Perhaps your hand upon the wheel
    Trembled before the port that was your destination.

    (c) Mike Stone

    Liked by 4 people

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  11. “Little Things”
    (Raanana, January 3, 2019)

    The desert hills behind me
    The white-flecked sea in front of me
    Clouds roiling on the horizon
    A chill wind shivers old bones.
    That’s when the clementines are best
    And a steaming cup of mud-black coffee.
    The sky is golden just before dusk,
    What more could one ask for?
    My hands age while I watch,
    I suppose, like everything else here.
    Slowly,
    It’s hard to tell,
    If you don’t pay much mind,
    Little things
    Get subtracted from your life
    Until there’s not much left
    But I guess it’s simpler
    To keep track of
    What’s important
    And what’s dying.

    (c) Mike Stone

    Liked by 4 people

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  13. The Tallest Tree

    Graying hairs, and
    Weakened bones
    Could snap as the fragile
    Aging branches
    Of the tallest tree.
    I am now as tall
    As I’ll ever be.
    Time is mine to keep.
    My eyes have opened
    Though I can hardly see,
    my limbs have
    taken me the distance
    and no longer carry me.
    I am wind and I am sea,
    The heavens tenderly
    Beckon me,
    My arms are open.
    Please
    look
    at
    me.

    Liked by 4 people

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  14. Old Are Young

    My wrinkles disappear,
    No more crow’s feet.

    Knees lack pain when I get up,
    or walk stairs. Mind so pin sharp

    it hurts. Touch my toes,
    cartwheel, run marathons.

    I’ve had to throw away my false teeth,
    As I’ve grown new ones.

    Age means less struggle.
    Life should be struggle.

    Age means less pain .
    Everything should hurt.

    I tell my wrinkled grandkids.
    Never grow old. Wish it on no one.

    Liked by 6 people

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  15. My Decrepit Is Good

    Bring on grey hairs turn to silver.
    Bring on sharp pain in the knees
    as I hobble downstairs, deafness
    is my body’s editor.

    Bring on memory loss
    as I know no different.
    Bring me my stick,
    my arrow of desire.

    Bring it all on, fuzzy brain,
    misty sight, zimmer frame,
    adult nappy’s, oxygen through
    plastic tubes, a knowing.

    Bring on wrinkles, laugh lines,
    tang of autumn, radical spice
    of spring, footskate winter,
    wild summer, all natural process.

    Liked by 5 people

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  16. Biddy To A Young God

    Have you some anti aging cream
    in your warm skin young god
    for as you caress these ancient hands
    this bent body wintered
    the wrinkles smooth out?

    You have planted fresh
    delight in these eyes
    that sprout visions again
    as when I was a young girl.

    You have breathed
    through my cold embers
    and stroked warmth
    into this thin skin.

    My face has plumpness
    and reddens
    as your hands find flesh
    for my angled skull.

    My limbs no longer bare
    begin to dress themselves
    with buds and colour
    for your lustful eyes.

    Perhaps these changes
    are only in your eyes,
    and this puddle reflection
    may be false, a false Spring.

    From forthcoming book “Stubborn Sod”, Alien Buddha Press, 2019

    Liked by 5 people

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  17. Bairns Are Old Codgers

    Before I get taken to play at my soft playcentre,
    my one year granddaughter toddles with her zimmer frame.
    Later we will take her to the memory cafe 
    where she’ll remember her past lives.
    “Hard”, of before dawn and midnight hours:
    A welder in the Clyde shipyard, 1942.
    “Stinks that,” she says of the steel shavings, and Swarfega. 
    “Heavy”, of the hammer…
    A kitchen servant in a big house. 
    “Hurts”, of calloused pestle and mortared deferment…
    I’m all giddy at tumble down
    slides, scramble nets and ballpools.

    (From “A World Where”, Nixes Mate Press, 2017)

    Liked by 3 people

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  19. .the rain came suddenly.

    sun, was done and dusted.

    by the slate they talked, shining.
    faces older now, friendship retained.

    learned a little more on life, the small
    things, wisdom rings
    the generations.

    i did not need all the mange tout.

    how beautiful

    sbm.

    Liked by 4 people

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