Past Seventy-Six

 2025

Am I as old as I think I am?

I think I’m seventy-six 

but time can tip us 

one way or another

and turn us inside out.

Just yesterday I was twelve

and I’m still in the same body.

Aging separates us 

from imaginative reality 

leaving us in the realm

of wishful thinking and envy.

It happens imperceptibly 

and progressively 

while doing what we thought

we were supposed to be doing.

It’s not too late to look past the numb 

and blunted world into those things 

that are eternal, beautiful, and magical,

to reverse our downward slide,

to return to our natural sense

of imaginative reality,

to speak in thunder,

to write in dreams,

to wander with 

sacred intent.

From: A Preface To The Universe:

Women, Getting Older, and Other Mysteries

Unpub. MS p. 34