Category: joy

Curiosity

Published on by geriatric pilgrim11 Comments
A poem about curiosity has got to have a cat in it somewhere, right?

~

… has become a joke between my sponsor and me.

“And, as always,” she says, “be curious.”

And I laugh because I’ve learned she’s right,

and she laughs because she knows I’ve learned she’s right:

that a shot of curiosity is vaccination against

all those viruses that have infected me for the past 80 years: 

resentment, shame, lack of self-worth, 

judgmentalism, co-dependency…

.~

Nothing defuses solipsism like a dose of “I wonder”—

wonder why that email from my old high school pissed me off for days,

wonder why I felt it was my responsibility to keep the meeting on topic,

wonder why I took an instant dislike to the woman ahead of me in the checkout line,

wonder why yesterday I felt that I was God’s gift to humanity and today that I’m a urinal cake—

shifting attention from self to subject,

neutralizing judgment, anticipation, awfulizing, expectation, and resentment.

~

Curiosity keeps me from remaining curled, like a caterpillar in a cocoon,

counsels me to explore the landscapes of my past, present, and future,

with no destination, only an appreciation for the journey.

Curiosity exercises senses I’d almost forgotten I had,

gives my racing mind a needed pit stop.

Curiosity exposes shapeless anxieties to light

where they evaporate, or (and be honest here)

sometimes spew pain previously lying dormant for years beneath denial,

erupting now in spasms of anguish until—son of a gun!—

melting into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Curiosity is what keeps the people I admire these days young,

what brings me awe,

and yes, what keeps me laughing.

~ ~

Thank God for Another Chance

Published on by geriatric pilgrim15 Comments

~ ~

Thank God for another chance to fold a fitted sheet,

another chance to butcher a banjo tune,

another chance to win at Wordle.

~

Thank God for another chance to make a perfect cup of hot chocolate,

another chance to discover the perfect hot sauce,

another chance to pick the perfect pen.

~

Thank God for another chance to stroll in springtime through a carpet of pink lady slippers,

another chance to walk in autumn through golden bracken and red maple trees,

another chance to snowshoe in winter across a snow-covered pond.

~

Thank God for another chance to slow dance with my wife in front of the fire on a winter night 

to Patsy Cline singing “Sweet Dreams,”

another chance to admire my granddaughter casting a blood worm

into the Androscoggin River on a summer afternoon,

another chance to decorate our Christmas tree with five generations’ worth of 

ornaments. 

~

Thank God for another chance to shed the ten pounds I’ve never been able to lose,

another chance to read “Lord of the Rings” for the umpteenth time,

another chance to write a poem that just might actually be one.

~

Thank God for another chance to keep my mouth shut when I don’t have anything to say,

another chance to learn how to take a compliment without trying to convince you 

I don’t deserve it,

another chance to stop trying to figure out who I think you think I ought to be.

~

Thank God for another chance to say, “I was wrong,”

another chance to say, “I love you,”

another chance to say, “Thank you.”

~ ~

Geriatric Passion

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments

“My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate.”

                                                                                                            —Florida Scott Maxwell

◊

Yes, but not like some geriatric stud

who’s still able each night to rock and roll;

Instead, imagine some gnarled tree in bud,

A blazing fire reduced to one red coal.

◊

Three barred owls in a tree, a rainbow,

My sleeping wife, a grandchild’s happy voice,

A doo-op tune, dark chocolate, will now

Bring forth ejaculations of clear joy.

◊

But then I have these night sweats full of fear.

Each day brings new regret for my old wrongs.

I rage for reasons that remain unclear

and weep at maudlin films and country songs.

◊

The plot gets more intense the more I age

As life’s last chapter moves towards life’s last page.

´◊

Wading

Published on by geriatric pilgrim8 Comments

~

The setting sun lays down a carpet on the bay.

A school of clouds across the skyline floats

over humpbacked islands of pointed firs.

Closer to shore, three skiffs face out to sea,

and closer still, silhouetted

against the light, my wife wades, 

legs cut off at the knee by undulating waters,

back straight, arms out to the side for balance

(always important as we get older),

testing each step, her face turned to the sea,

while on this shore of tide pools and broken shells,

I, who find the water too cold,

the stones too sharp for my old feet, 

lean against a barnacle-encrusted rock

watching, wading in gratitude.

~

Querencia

Published on by geriatric pilgrim1 Comment

~

…from the Spanish verb “querer,” to want, desire, love; an emotional inclination toward a location; a home ground, a favorite place.—Wikipedia.

~

“A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go to in the ring… In this place he feels that he has his back against the wall and in his querencia he is inestimably more dangerous and almost impossible to kill.” Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon.

~

Or man-cave or refuge or sanctuary or study or simply the room at the end of the hall where I hang out wrapping it around me like a favorite bathrobe or suit of armor depending…

where I 

gaze at pictures of my wife ML looking radiant in her new clerical collar despite her son’s having left to live on the West Coast… my daughter Laurie’s watercolor she painted before her cancer diagnosis of a blue hand reaching up thru brown rocks toward bright flower petals … my brother sister & me skunk as a drunk before I sobered up … ML’s boys, Laurie & me swimming on Mount Desert Island when I thought we could blend our families… grandchildren sitting in my lap, playing by the river, hiking in the woods when we did…a panorama of Banjo Camp North where I named my banjo Joy… Jerry, Marty, & I—6’2” then— the Fish Factory Trio, singing “The Old Dope Pedler” at a high school variety show in 1961… four views of the Desert House of Prayer outside Tucson, Arizona where ML & I danced in the desert under a full moon Easter morning in 2001… a lioness sunning herself on a rock on the Serengeti Plains in 2018…

keep mementos such as a contestant pin from the 1961 L&M State Basketball Championship…three vintage baseball caps of my favorite teams… the skin of a rattlesnake I killed in Idaho in 1962…diaries going back to 1963…autographed books by heroes, mentors, friends and former students … cards from grandchildren… three bowls of rocks from my travels…rocks from those travels too big for bowls… a felt fedora covered in pins from airports around the world… a turkey feather from a walk in the woods… four clam shells from walks on the beach… a letter holder my father made for my mother when they were in high school… a wooden platter I remember him carving in the evenings after he’d come out of the Army & was working as an apprentice carpenter & we didn’t have a TV… my grandmother’s desk… 

lose and find myself in books of non-fiction, fiction, poetry…books about travel, Maine, writing, spirituality… five banjos…one guitar…one harmonica…one mouth-harp… one Vietnamese flute… ten songbooks… two file cabinets of old writing… two coffee cups of pens…my current diary… a yellow legal pad of paper… a computer … 

look out the window at a world of uncertainty for my country & my own life & those I love holding my favorite pen like Excalibur my diary like a shield enthroned in my ergonomic office chair feeling inestimably more dangerous & almost impossible to kill…

~ ~

Scotty

Published on by geriatric pilgrim3 Comments
Thnx to Scotty’s daughter, Jeanie, for the photo

~

Served as Tail Twister of the Lions Club.

He liked his scotch and Camel cigarettes.

Cheered our team at high school basketball games.

Oh, and by the way, he was my pastor,

who, when he ascended to the pulpit,

his black cassock haloed by white candles,

showed me that even short men with bald spots

can be—if only for an hour—holy.

~

Sitting above me in his purple chair

he would sometimes just slightly turn his head,

look down at my family sitting in

the right front pew and give us all a wink.

God, I learned from Scotty, looks after us

with a neighborly twinkle in his eye.

~

Nevertheless

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments
Watercolor by Laurie L. Wile

~ ~

I’ve always known I’d never get

whatever it is I wanted.

No way, I’ve felt, do I deserve 

my desires—I’m just not worthy.

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.

~

(Of course, I’ve never known just what

I’ve wanted until somebody

told me just what I ought to want,

good co-dependent that I am.

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.)

~

There’s so much that I’ve never done,

and much that I’ve done I failed at;

places I never went to, and

places I never really saw.

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.

~

Often, I’ve been a hollow man,

trying to stuff his emptiness

with all manner of addictions

(the list’s banal, embarrassing).

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.

~

The faces of the people that

I’ve ignored, hurt, disappointed,

abandoned, disdained, or abused

haunt me in the wee small hours. 

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.

~

Now diminished by old age to

a funhouse mirror of myself,

I sense Death looking at his watch,

impatient, counting down the time.

Nevertheless, my life’s been good.

Through all of it, I have been loved.

~ ~

Somehow

Published on by geriatric pilgrim7 Comments

…

Somehow, my parents from broken homes gave me a whole one.

Somehow, I met the right teachers at the right time.

Somehow, I fell into a vocation I loved instead of a job I endured.

Somehow, I survived my child’s death. 

Somehow, I stopped trying to drown my problems in cheap scotch.

Somehow, I learned to listen.

Somehow, I discovered joy.

Somehow, I no longer feel ashamed of being human.

Somehow, I’ve kept going even when I feel I’m walking in a circular trench.

Somehow, I’m still alive.

Somehow, I’ve not only survived, but grown.

Somehow, I remain hopeful.

Somehow, I believe, is another name for Grace.

…

The Old Lesson

Published on by geriatric pilgrim5 Comments

~

71 years old,

lungs aflame,

lower back throbbing,

I rest on my hiking poles

halfway up 

still another hill 

at an iron gate

amid gorse and nettles, 

trying to pick 

out the path rising 

through a herd

of cows grazing on 

gangrenous grass between me 

and another gate 

and the trail that 

winds through woods

to tonight’s B&B

and the joy of a hot bath.

~

The gate clangs as 

I trudge into the herd,

which parts before me 

like the red sea

except for one

brown and white cow,

legs tucked beneath her,

who stares at me 

impassively,

before lifting her haunches, 

and dropping a steamy 

pile on the path

already strewn with

“chips,” “dung,” 

“flaps,” “muffins,” 

“patties,” “pies” —

choose your euphemism.

            ~

The pasture’s a mine field.

 I zig, zag, circle, 

back-track, hop—

marching thirty yards

to advance ten.

Fog mists my glasses.

Sweat soaks my shirt.

The air smells of decay.

At this rate,

I’ll still be 

hiking after dark.

Panic attacks like

a squad of minges.

            ~

Then, like an aging general 

roused from his nap

to lead me once more 

into battle against 

my old foe, Avoidance, 

comes the prayer: 

            ~

God, grant me the serenity

to accept those things

I cannot change …

            ~

I keep to the path, 

hear the squish,

feel my boots slide, 

raise my eyes 

to silver clouds

billowing over a line

of ancient trees,

glimpse red sandstone,

            ~

the courage to change

the things I can …

            ~

squish, slog, slide,

watch a brown hare

scamper to a stone wall

adorning the hill

like a necklace,

            ~

And the wisdom

to know the difference. 

            ~

Now at the gate

to freedom,

I bow to the sky,

having learned 

yet again

that to get to joy

you often have

to walk through shit.

            ~          

(after David Whyte’s The Old Interior Angel)

Joy

Published on by geriatric pilgrim10 Comments

#

Oh, there were early inklings: 

the feel of my bat sending the ball over the left-field fence, 

speeding in a convertible over the one-lane wooden bridge at 60 m.p.h. 

watching the sun set behind Wyoming’s Grand Tetons—

strange times when I somehow escaped the carefully cultivated confines of my mind. 

But with no idea what those moments meant, I forgot them. 

Only after the Great Loss, 

And years of slogging 

through missing keys and sleepless nights, 

of being terrified strife would strike again, 

of sarcasm, swearing, pounding the walls, 

of regrets for what I had and hadn’t done, 

of downcast eyes and hunched shoulders, 

of tears during saccharine movies

and sobbing on anniversaries,

came the song: 

Buddy Holly on the car radio after a really bad day.

First humming along, then softly singing, 

then louder, louder, until at the top of my lungs: 

“It’s so easy to fall in love!”

Broken open,

releasing embarrassment, lethargy, fear, anger, guilt, shame, and sorrow.

Later, I realized how foolish I must have looked to other motorists. 

But I didn’t care. There was no going back.

No retreat. No surrender. 

No forgetting such a gift.

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