Three Poems About Getting Older

 Friends

By the time I realized I was getting older, 
I was sixty-two, divorced and lost in the tall grass.
Over time I denied my aching joints and muscles,
my increased vulnerabilities, and couldn't admit
that I was no longer invincible.
I realized that diseases not normally killers, could now be;
that my body felt like I carried too much of the world.
The hard realization of acceptance
eventually became unavoidable.

I’m seventy-seven and don’t like cooking for one;
I don’t like sleeping alone, and I’m finished with dating.
I’m lost in the age of memories, missing my wife
and our shared memories, estranged from my brothers,
sometimes feeling loneliness and depression,
decidedly unmoored and irrelevant.

So I drink to dull all that.
I sit with my favorite wine or tequila
in a strange universe of silence and solitude,
enjoying my art collection and counting my blessings,
at peace that I am friends with whatever
I’m sipping during the evening’s
waning glow.

Life Support

It is difficult to let go losses,
pain, and disappointments;
of things you think should never
have happened but did.
Some things have had no closure
and we want that finality
but it is elusive.
Some surrender to isolation
and addictions.

Nostalgia settles in us—
what we did, the guilt we carry,
the sorrow, the good times,
and maybe a little obsession over
what could have been,
pestered by those what if questions.
And longing draws us in to what can never be.

We worry about our children who have to work
through their difficulties without our interference.
As children they needed us, then they didn’t.
Thankfully, my children are blessings
and are better parents than I was.

My memories of times and places intermix,
faces and voices fade in and out,
and the memories of my youth
are like looking through rain splattered windows.
Regardless, memory is the life support I hold onto,
despite the shadows and ghosts of the past.

Like Ice

The older I get,
the more vulnerable I feel.
I no longer have that feeling
of invincibility, like I could do
anything and live to tell about it.

Everyone is fearful—
there is too much of the world
in our lives,
too much bloodshed,
too much corruption,
too much greed, avarice, and gluttony.
We are limping and our hearts are horribly bruised.

I catch myself looking at alumni web sites,
counting the number of classmates and friends
who have passed away.
Most of them I hadn’t seen in sixty years,
but I still mourn the losses.

And despite my age, experience, and therapy,
I am unable to shake off the dark companion
that sits on my shoulder like ice.
No matter the therapeutic manipulations,
it’s just there, intractable, a part of my life,
one of many things I have to let be.

~Marc A. Crowley

The Owners Of Granada Street

Willcox, Arizona

The Late 1950s

Good friends, mostly boys, 

a few girls, but we all owned it.

No one fought over it.

It was our refuge from the eruptions

of domestic authority.

Baseball, softball, football,

tricycles, and bicycles,

roller skates with metal wheels 

(remember the key), and hide and seek.

Summer nights, sitting under the corner street light,

swarmed by flying insects, watching bats 

and the occasional owl; 

from boisterous to subdued,

it seemed to us like a pretty good world.

During our street games, 

we stepped aside for the few cars to pass.

The drivers knew us well.

The Baptist pastor and his blue-haired wife scowled,

but everyone else had friendly smiles and a wave.

Once in a while a neighbor

would stop and bat a few balls to us.

I have never forgotten their smiles,

looking like they were twelve again.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 41

I'll Remember This Much

About 1962 

Willcox, Arizona

Let’s not think about where 

our old neighborhood went.

The street names have remained,

but searching will not find much of

anything removed. It just looks different.

Remember how we played basketball

in December’s chill and frost,

fingers becoming stiff and red,

and how the O’Connor’s blood hounds

chased the ball until one of them

bit a hole in it?

In spring, when all flowers blossomed,

the land seemed merciful and soft.

Then summer, with a few days too warm,

displayed new mirages in the distance,

silvery and ghostly and mysterious.

We rode our bikes out toward them

but soon realized we weren’t 

getting any closer.

I remember especially the autumn 

of my eighth grade, when boys and girls,

shimmering in fall colors and full blush,

noticed each other differently, 

gradually becoming aware 

of our awkward civilities, 

of boys’ cracking voices, that whatever began 

blossoming the previous summer 

made us fidgety and confused,

having no idea what was really happening.

In the tenth grade I realized what had

really happened, and that memory

has tickled me ever since.

From: Memories Of Things

Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 46

Reflections Of A Journeyman Seeker

I’m terrified of deep water, sharks, and barracudas;

of long dark tunnels with no end or light in sight.

I have been a lonesome traveler, a Journeyman Seeker,

at home in prayers, a fan of metaphor and paradox;

a window builder, a carpenter, a teacher,

a lover of wine, Beethoven, and Mary Oliver;

of my children and grandchildren and dear friends;

of art, pianos, poetry, caresses, and sky blue eyes;

of an embrace that says I will never let you go.

My journeys have taken me 

to the depths of the Grand Canyon, 

the rugged heights of the Sierra Nevada,

to deserts, forests, and the Columbia River Bar, 

to the Pacific’s boisterous, unrelenting surf,

and into the inexplicable presence of the Divine. 

Everything I have seen and done has been a blessing.

I have mellowed with age, my face weathered, my hair thinned,

disregarding anything a mirror has to say, a small price paid 

for stepping into and out of nature’s spiritual mysteries, 

embracing passion and risking a vulnerable heart laid bare,

for without passion, we won’t know where love will take us,

we won’t know a way into the depth of love and trust, 

we won’t know the wondrous heat of a lover’s fiery kiss.

From: A Preface to the Universe

Unpub. MS p. 57

Subversive Meandering

Listen without ears to the voice

that calls you, Come this way.

The intangible things that breathe 

have no names but are life.

Something in the mist and fog

of our mystical musings awaits us. 

One step more into 

the cosmic wobble, lovers,

always one step more.

Heart, mind, compassion, empathy.

Our souls. Even those that are 

imaginary and fictional, we name. 

Words become us, however reckless.

Nothing that lives can be safe.

Stop listening to the music

and become the music— 

bang the drums, play the trumpets,

sing the prayer, be what you are.

Should we trust anyone’s 

proclamation of faith 

who doesn’t argue with God?

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 15

Marilyn Monroe Had This To Say

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius,

and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous

than absolutely boring.

Marilyn Monroe

Getting There

at seventy-seven

Funny is age,

getting there day by day, 

without really noticing, then

wham-O! here they are. 

The years.

The memories.

There was nothing to warn me 

that this was coming,

that sense of sorrow that in my chest swells,

the ache we’ve all had just before

shedding tears from pains or losses,

though some might be shed later,

in their own time,

without warning or reason.

Gently it takes me into a place past all knowing.

I don’t know the why of it,

and I don’t try to know,

but Knowing does come out of it.

And there is sweet nostalgia,

rising, like softened anxiety, 

a five-year-old innocently looking 

into the world, a little scared,

visions of curiosity and wonder;

(the world works how?),

the excitement of all things new,

now saying to myself,

Oh, what I missed, what I missed.

Today I step more softly,

and remember there is joy all around.

The heart knows 

what the mind cannot understand,

how it feeds the soul,

how it balances the body,

stays reason and lets loose the wordless seasons,

opening blossoms— sorrow, nostalgia, and joy— 

each its own beauty.

I know my stories, the who and the how— 

joys, failures, tragedies— 

but the real stories, 

the ones I’ve never breathed,

only my heart 

knows best.

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 39