Category: retirement

In the Automobile Service Center Lounge

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments

~

Along the white walls,

we lounge in black chairs

fiddling with iPhones,

flipping through magazines,

Or sit at round tables 

scattered like planets 

in a mini-solar system, 

hunched over computers 

or in my case 

a moleskin journal. 

~

Under the dealership’s framed 

five-star rating for satisfaction,

a woman whose glasses frames 

match the color of her blue book-

mark purses her lips, lost in

a paperback world of 

broad-shouldered men 

and black-haired vixens.

~

Two chairs down, a white-haired 

guy —green polo shirt, khakis— 

swaps a newspaper for 

a magazine, trades that for 

his iPhone, gets up, goes 

to the lobby door and 

stares through the window

before sitting down again 

to play with his beard.

~

At another table, a gray-haired

woman in jeans and a flannel shirt 

is scrolling through 

pictures of kids or cats 

(I can’t tell), until

Sonny, the Service Manager 

calls, “Wilson!”

She rises. 

“Talk to you for a minute?” 

She leaves with him, 

returns a few minutes later, 

sits down, sighs, says 

to no one in particular:

 “Well, I’m going to be 

here a while longer.”

~

At the other end of the room—

past a guy in a dirty 

baseball cap, his computer 

speckled with stickers

(I thought Yeti was a snowman),

And two gals in tan jackets 

sitting at the same table 

but ignoring each other—

a woman in a gray raincoat 

with large silver buttons 

paws through her leather handbag.

Tanned, with blonde hair,

probably dyed, large hands 

and arthritic fingers 

adorned with silver rings,

she looks up, sees me, smiles.

Embarrassed, I burrow 

back into my journal.

~

Sonny returns, calls, “Fiori?”

The white-haired guy jumps up. 

“All set. No hurry.”

Fiori exits into the lobby …

and for a palpable moment

The rest of us leave

our separate worlds,

finally looking at one other,

connecting through our need 

to hear that voice 

 of authority tell us,

“You’re all set!”

~ ~ ~

Walking the College Campus at 6:30 A.M. on the 80th Anniversary of of the Bombing of Hiroshima

Published on by geriatric pilgrim4 Comments

#

Police sirens fade as I pass through the

memorial gate to an empty quad,

where morning sun reflects off the windows

of old brick buildings, deserted now of

the footsteps and voices, the ambitions,

anxieties, astonishment, fatigue,

confusion, gratitude, egotism,

disappointments, hangovers, and regret

usually throbbing throughout the halls.

Even in the quiet of the morning,

a deeper silence seems to emanate

from these buildings, a collective wisdom—

coalesced and alive—which assures me:

when all is said and done, all shall be well.

The Chapel at Bowdoin College: Painting by Tim Banks

#

Thank God for Another Chance

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~ ~

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

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“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

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~

…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…

~ ~

Gazebo

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~

“We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.”— Andrew Harvey

~

At the Spiritual Renewal Center in Arizona

I’m not feeling renewed spiritually or otherwise.

Dusty desert wind sears my lungs as I sit in 90° heat,

stuck to a faded plastic chair in a rundown gazebo—

rotting floor…peeling paint… broken railings—

good place, I think, for an octogenarian

with COPD, a weak heart. and arthritic joints.

Just six years ago I walked the nearby desert trails 

for miles past petroglyphs and rattlesnakes,

up rocky canyons and down sandy washes.    

This morning, I reached for my inhaler after 20 minutes 

and turned back feeling old and dilapidated.

Now, I sit in this decaying gazebo awfulizing about my future:

a sudden heart attack that strikes me down

before I can say good-bye to those I’ve loved, 

or a stroke which leaves me paralyzed and drooling 

while others change their lives to look after me,

or worse, dementia, unable even to say thank you for caring.

Which leads me to wonder: Will I be missed when I’m gone?

Certainly not by the flat cumulous clouds 

floating over the hills on the horizon

 or the wind through the prickly pear, cholla, barrel,

organ pipe and ocotillo cactus,

 not to mention the saguaro standing

with arms raised to the heavens,

 and certainly not by the coyotes 

barking from the copper-colored hills behind me, 

or the doves or cardinals or flycatchers or thrashers 

or warblers or wrens or quails,

nor, come to think of it, by the yellow blossoms

from the palo verdi  blowing in the desert wind, gilding

the rotten gazebo floor and my decrepitude 

with the golden certainty of new life. 

~

Pondering Pants

Published on by geriatric pilgrim6 Comments

~

He remembers the corduroys 

that whistled when he ran away 

from his mother and her hairbrush.

~

Then later, dungarees, 

rolled up at the bottom, 

when he wanted to look tough,

and pegged chinos, 

black with a belt in the back, 

when he wanted to look cool.

~

At his local college, 

to let people know he’d worked Out West,

he wore frayed Frisco Jeans 

with a faded circle on the left back pocket

where he stuck his tin of smokeless tobacco.

~

As an English teacher, 

he wore striped bell bottoms, 

along with double-breasted sports coats, 

and paisley ties with matching pocket handkerchiefs, 

his armor against feeling incompetent.

~

To become a writer, 

he decided he must have khakis

because the New Yorker ad 

said Kerouac wore them.

~

He switched to cargo pants

to enhance his image 

of poet, pilgrim, seeker,

setting forth on the Camino de Santiago,

with all those pockets.

~

Until, proud to proclaim

his waist size hadn’t changed

in over forty years,

he made sure his pants

had elastic waist bands

to go around an expanding gut.

~

These days, however, 

he’s discovered sweatpants, 

because they’re comfortable 

and he no longer 

gives a rat’s ass what he looks like.

~

First Thoughts on Spring

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We would rather be ruined than changed—W.H. Auden

**

The sun shines on budding branches;

snow has retreated into the shadows

exposing last year’s dead leaves.

A cacophony of cardinals, titmice, finches

sparrows, jays, and crows 

fill the chilly air.

I want to yell out the window,

SHUT UP! IT’S TOO EARLY!

*

I’m not ready for this.

I want to spend the day

by the fire with Jack Reacher,

sipping hot chocolate and petting the cat

while Jack beats up bad guys,

look every now and then

out the window,

agreeing with me and myself

that’s it’s too cold/snowy/icy

to go anywhere.

*

Hibernation may be dull,

but it’s a peaceful dull,

free from having to expend 

all that energy

walking in the woods,

planting a garden,

going to a beach,

having coffee with friends, 

celebrating birthdays with family …

*

But those damn birds keep chittering,

like an orchestra tuning up before the symphony begins.

***

On Hope: an Admonition

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#

Stop confusing it with expectation.

You’re going to be disappointed,

resentful, angry, pissed off at God

because the cancer didn’t disappear,

you didn’t get that new job you wanted,

Hurricane Hattie flooded your basement.

#

(Write this down: Don’t hope for anything

you can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste.)

#

And even if you do get to come home

from the hospital a day early,

or the car coming right at you swerves

away at the last saving second,

or your friend’s stock tip pays off enough

to finance an Aruba vacation,

please, please, please don’t proclaim to the world

how God in His goodness answered your prayers.

You’re only setting yourself up for

future resentment, not to mention

guilt and shame for having somehow displeased

His Royal Holy Hood.

#

Instead, divest, dismantle, ditch, doff, dump

expectations, anticipations, wishes.

Take a deep breath, and go for a walk

along that path you’ve been walking all

your life. Don’t worry about what’s ahead

—Here be dragons, right?—

but have a seat on this old tree stump.

Take more deep breaths, turn, look back

at all those times when, despite all your

mistakes, your blindness to injustice,

your embracing each Seven Deadly Sin

as if your happiness depended on it

while breaking all Ten Commandments

like you were making a hash omelet,

times when, despite your screwed-up family,

the hereditary overbite,

hip dysplasia, and weak heart,

times when despite the ugly divorce,

your daughter’s even uglier death,

all those goddamn operations,

the loss of lung capacity and libido,

you love the woman you wake up next to,

you sing to Sirius FM’s ‘Fifties Gold,’

you savor your morning hot chocolate,

you look forward to lunch with old classmates,

you feed the birds, play the banjo, plant

a garden, enjoy Wordle and Brit Box,

worshiping in silence, dabbling in poetry,

watching the grandchildren grow up.

#

Hope is not about getting what you want,

it’s about seeing what you already have,

the force that makes life worth living,

that same power that is pushing new growth

from this dead tree stump you’re sitting on.

#

Now, go get those dragons!