Older Than Dirt

Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

  

Today you are officially
old, senior by even the strictest
definition.

I dare not write
to say Happy Birthday
risk opening the ancient wound
each of us hurting the other
in ways so subtle
they go right over
our heads.

I’m still not over
your last missive
dripping regret
cursing the calendar
biology
wrinkles
being wider
maybe not wiser
your losses as palpable
as the sorrow still in my psyche
grief as old as dirt
not even buried
by four decades
and a marriage that’s right for me.

Us at our best
still eclipses the pain
the sadness
the chances we passed up
each in our turn
the eternal enmeshment
of our psyches
my dreams
a constant replay
you still haunting
my soul
with alternating grace
and damage.

I was in my scrapbooks
this week
for another reason.
You were frozen in time
young and virile.
I hit replay in your
photos, cards, gifts
vapors of your disappearing acts
rising out the pages
opportunity unrealized
loss crystallized
fading to yellow

tears of mourning
arthritis of the spirit
too old and creaky
to flow down the rut
we dug
in my cheek.

~~~

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