In later life
you are gardening
not for yourself
but for your
successors.
Tag: genealogy
Homeward bound
Just as well the house
I lived in as a child has
been demolished,
bulldozed, removed from
the surface of the planet
and replaced by two new
houses with no history.
Not that I would want
it still standing but
extensively remodeled
and modernised. No
point in that other than
it representing the spot
on the planet where
I was formed and grew.
What I want, I suppose,
is to magically return
to the functioning 1950s
house, even the 1960s.
Furniture still in place,
pictures on walls, carpets
on floors, ornaments on
shelves, books in bookcases.
And people, people in chairs,
in kitchens, watching tv,
in the garden, welcoming
the New Year, talking of
the past. A house, a home,
reconstructed, revisited,
a place I once couldn’t
wait to escape for new
adventures, new sights
and sounds, new people.
But the past is another
country, and you can’t go back.
Those were the days my friend
Old age comes,
finally, like the
turning on of a
spotlight, when there
is no one left alive
who knew you
as a child.
Shredded
When you look back
on your long life
it is as if every detail,
every moment, was
written on a great scroll,
and then put
through a shredder, so
that you are reduced to
picking up thin strips
of paper, each with a
phrase, a headline,
an image, unconnected
to anything else.
Good luck putting
the pieces together.
Your time starts…now
We spend our lives waiting to sit one exam after another.
Double entry
As you stumble through
life you encounter
people you love
and people you hate,
and vice versa.
All you can do is hope,
when you balance your
end of life ledger,
that the former
outnumber the latter.
Probably twas ever thus
You can’t control your grandchildren, or what happens to them and their generation; can’t control your children or what happens to them and their generation. Hell, you can’t even control much about yourself and your generation.
In the shadows
Searching for
memories of childhood
and youth. Events that were
once full of colour and sound
and movement and excitement
and familiar people and places,
are now, at best, faded shadows
words forgotten, places unpictured
names and faces beyond recall.
Drunkard’s walk
Life is full of incidents and accidents, and the occasional cunning plan gone horribly wrong.
Three score years. And ten.
When I was young I couldn’t imagine being 70. Now I am in my seventies I can’t imagine being any other age.
