For the last three years I’ve written a poem about age each year with my classes. You can
them until I write this year’s poem because I don’t want them to influence this one, unless
that’s what happens to come out. This is a writing activity I will be doing with my students in
April. I give them links to my poems as well as the resources I’ve pasted in the ones from
2017. Here goes:
Forty-five
Looking in the mirror
I marvel at the changes
In my skin.
Was the texture always
This way?
I feel like I could bathe
In moisturizer
Never to be fully hydrated again.
Forty-Five is wondering
When your hands began looking older.
Looking at marks and wondering if it’s a freckle
Or an age spot
Or if there is a difference.
It’s wanting to do better by my body
Treat it more kindly.
Fill it with food that nourishes
Instead of just fills.
Forty-five is the age of knowing my sons
As soon-to-be adults
And enjoying spending time with them.
While,
At the same time,
Wondering if they will bankrupt us
With the grocery bill each week.
Forty-five is attempting
To come to terms with loss
Each year it gets bigger
Each year there is more.
Saying goodbye to loved ones
Is not something I’m good at.
Or that I want to be good at.
It is the year of:
Our twenty-six year together
Our twenty-third wedding anniversary
My twenty-third year of teaching
Our seventeenth year of parenting.
The numbers get bigger,
The memories grow,
And I wish time would slow
For just a moment
Or two.
Forty-five is growing into my skin,
A little bit more.
Praying for forty-five more years
So that I can figure it all out.
Forty-five is listening
To Jason Isbell’s
If We Were Vampires
And knowing that forty years
Will never feel like enough.
Forty-five is being grateful
For every single day.
Appreciating the beauty
Of a sunrise
Of a walk with your dogs
Of a night at home with those you love.
This is forty-five.
