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we do not look forward

Submitted by Jennifer Dixey on January 5, 2012

"I'm not looking forward to getting old"
my husband says, his
hair grayed impossibly,
blue eyes already betraying
the youthful fire they once held

"It's better than the alternative"
I answer him, smiling, winking,
the wrinkles around my eyes deepening,
fulfilling the promise I once made to myself
when I was, oh yes, young:
to let them bear me to my crone age
without protest
like the swift feet
of the black birds
they are known by

we do not look forward
to getting old
(we just look backward
and wonder how it happened
so very fast)
we do not look forward
to it any more than
we could look forward
to being born

Comments

Neil McKay

January 6, 2012

Wow, great stuff. "like the swift feet of the black birds they are known by"
The whole poem is very authentic and touching and wise.

Benjamin Gorman

January 6, 2012

We look back through a telescope
all is compressed,
time packed tightly
in memorial layers

We look forward, as kids,
through impossible landscapes
eternity's haze obscuring
where our imaginations fail to engage

One day, looking forward,
we see the end of the line
the station looming
and forget it is but one leg of a longer journey