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.

~~~

Photo Credit: © goccedicolore - Fotolia.com

Rosary

 Poem © 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

The men I’ve loved

are beads

interconnected

heart amulets

strung together,

beads I’ve prayed over

since my first love

in Catholic School.

He was my sign

of the cross

made with the cross

of the rosary itself:

start on my forehead

follow with

the chaste ritual kiss

on the cross

before the litany

of repetitious prayers.

First love, my passion

sacrificed so young

all the others

carried and continued

the loss.

No wonder to this day

I still sing the requiem Mass

spontaneously

the Latin words bursting from my lips

at the most inopportune moments

religious Tourette’s

a sanctimonious, musical tic.

Most of my men

were the Joyful,

Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries

all rolled into one.

The Church taught me little

practical

about how to deal with any of them.

Thank God I disobeyed

about birth control

and didn’t drag

any children

into my

learn by burn

my hell

on Earth.

Now even with the cosmos

the only God big enough for me

I work so hard

on loving myself

as much as all those men

and every living thing

I still crave

the rhythm

of the rosary

the linkage

of all my loves

with a Bigger Love

the love

that now must start

and end

with me

on my own tongue

where I receive

Communion.

~.~.~

Photo Credit: © Pietro D'Antonio – fotolia. com