And here I share and thank poet Susan Frybort for this powerful and affecting poem. I believe she is married to writer, Jeff Brown. Strong creative pairing right there.
I am all for writing that explores aging as the stage of wonder and grace it can usher in.
Sure aging is tough on the body. Life is generally tough on the body. And everything else.
Our youth centric, immortality deluded society keeps a very tight lid on aging’s upside. Let’s face it. Impending death (whether 10, 20 or 30 or 40 years in the future) is bad for business.
Our main North American society is painfully arrested in advancing widespread integration of and honoring our elders. We can look to indigenous tribes and many immigrant cultures for much better modeling of how to treat senior citizens.
They are just people after all.
Archaeology for the Woman’s Soul
No one told me
it would be like this—
how growing older
is another passage
of discovery
grand transformation,
and if some things become torn apart
lost along the way,
many other means show up
to bring me closer
to the center of my heart.
No one ever told me
if whatever wonder
waits ahead
is in another realm
and outside of time.
But the amazement, I found,
is that the disconcerting things
within the here and now
that I stumble
and trip my way
through, also
lead me
gracefully
home.
And no one told me
that I would ever see
an earth so strong
and fragile, or
a world so sad
and beautiful.
And I surely
didn’t know
I’d have
all this life
yet in me
or such fire
inside my
bones.
~Susan Frybort~ With gratitude for this Soul Deep Poem
Expressive Compulsive 