My poem today comes out of a conversation with my brother who is visiting from Western Australia. It began with my relating how I stood for more than five minutes in a pizza shop here, in the town where I live, and no-one offered to serve me, even though I  made eye contact and "I'm here" noises.

Transformation?

"They answered the phone
cooked pizzas talked to each other
no-one came to the counter they
looked away it seemed."

"That happened to me
in the bicycle shop back home
I stood a couple of metres
in front of these two and
they looked right through me."

The penny drops.
"Were they young?"
And now we know the truth.
We have become invisible.
No arguing with those
experiences. 

I believe now I have turned
to glass. For some people
I am a mirror. For others
I am not there, just like
the window panes they watch
the world go by through.

"You can see right through me".
I thought that a compliment.
Now I know the other
may not even have heard me.

(By a Baby Boomer.)

Off the Cuff 30: Meditations on Letting Go & Gratitude

APAD 30    prompt: "letting go"

Meditations on Letting Go


1.
Low weak sun insists
we let go of summer
let winter squeeze through
curtain gaps.

2.
Last night, driving,
my father's hands reaching
through time's curtain; I still
regret not being there
to hold them.

3.
And where is my daughter
going? Come back, my hands
implore, stay young, stay
home, stay smiling.
She massages my head
and hands. She smiles.
And yet, she is going.

4.
My worst nightmare
involved being on high dry land

hundreds of feet above ground
all around me the drop:

I would stop the fall through
sheer will. Why not let go?

5.
Why not let go?
Regret makes you
slow. To be fast
don't fasten, hasten
just let go
of the past.
Good advice to self
so often shelved.

6.
My mother tells me
the newspaper reports
at least one hundred and seventy
people, mostly women, of course
aged over the century are
alive in our state, Victoria.
My mother, almost eighty-four
aims to reach the dizzy heights
not let go of life, be
one of the select
to reach her centenary, and like
Agave americana, bloom again.

7,
Ferns and herbs renew.
Birth, maturity, death
for the rest of us.


Gratitude

you, plump
artefact of desire
you over-ripe melon
you soft sac:
so happy I didn't
lose you to
surgeon's cuts
happy to feel you
floppy survivor
feel your painful
reminders yet
feel the lack of
weight, absence
which makes my heart
grow fonder
feel free to take you
to bed, free
of the fear
breast
cancer bred.

 NaPoWriMo  30