FALLING

 

Falling to the floor

Landing painfully once again

The future looks grim

 

STRUGGLING to SLEEP, a poem

 

Strutting round my bed,

sleep hovers tauntingly

just beyond the reach

of my wired body

struggling to find

a foxhole in my mattress

to hide from wakefulness

 

 

AT 90

 

No five-year plan for me

Aging limits my outlook

so, each day I wake up

looking forward to

breakfast and dinner,

speaking to my children,

watching films and news on cable,

reading novels and poetry,

          Newsday, NYT, Washington Post;

          inspiration to write poems,

          pretzels, caramels and cookies,

          going to sleep at night

 

 

DEMOCRACY (Senryu)

 

Ben Franklin said it

We have a democracy

If we can keep it

MOTHER. a poem

 

Mother, Momma, Mom

Different names

for the source

from whence we sprang

What did

Mother, Momma, Mom

do for us

Everything

Along with total love,

she taught us

to whistle

tie our shoes

and made all

of our meals

PREDATORS (Senryu)

 

 

Predators exist

They seem to be everywhere

Be very alert

MARRIAGE, YIN and YANG, a poem

 

A woman ensnares a man

in Carolyn Heilbrun’s analysis:

“the rest is aging and regret”

On the other side of that grim coin

are the fruits of a joyful marriage:

pleasure, connection, children

Your experience could be

the luck of the draw,

or perhaps the product

of a life lived well or ill

 

The quote comes from Heilbrun’s book,

WRITING A WOMAN’S LIFE.