how we look

 

 

 

youth

middle age

golden years

Turn and Look

middle age has a tough time turning to look

 

grands have no trouble

turning to grin at Nana-

but my son

has to follow my weird directions

and wonders ’bout my sanity

“face away”, he wonders

“from my mother on Mother’s Day”

with my biking shoes

and their LLBean boots

purchased for them by Nana- obliging,

diligently winking with side looks

back to the village that raises them.

 

Looking Back

illustrator:Molly Idle

Forseeing

by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it’s as if you’d reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can’t help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it’s simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won’t go on
like this forever.