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.
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.
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
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