Later Phases

Mi Diario, by Elena Dudina

beautiful life

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."- Soren Kierkegaard

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these."- George Washington Carver

"You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that."- Arthur Ashe

"There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once."- Ken Venturi (think about this one...he didn't tell. I like this very much. Lord God, You know this is why I continue to blog, because I never say it all at once both because I cannot and would not if I could.)

Ken Venturi, a world class golfer, he recorded 14 PGA tour career wins over a couple decades and he won the US Open in 1964. He also became a sports color commentator, working for CBS 35 years, and ran a series of instructional schools.

Tonight's poem was written over a year ago to a friend who I shall not name. I am now of an age that I have friends of many ages, mostly not comparable to mine. It is a truth of aging that your people disappear. I am an orphan of course. Many people approaching the sixty-fifth birthday would be. My mother would be nearing 89 had she lived. She died approaching 80 and I live in her house. My father would have been older and my step-father nearing 85. He died at 76. I think my father died at around 80 as well. They are all gone. They all are all gone except a few cousins and cousins once removed and beyond. I believe there is an aunt once married to my half uncle still alive.

I love freely if I can, but I will chase no one, not any more. I haven't the energy, am not about to begin any big thing unless directly ordered by the One Who left us here. There's ways He can capture my attention, but as yet nothing. I have been praying steadily for years now, stating that He knows the state of my single life, the state of my need and I can rest in that, expecting He will fill what I actually need. What he has given me is a life in the blogs and a continuation in my profession and my service life. He has given me a life that is slowly diminishing in all ways. I have lost my singing but not my keyboard. I have not worked enough this year to break even, and though I have used up several thousand dollars, I am not broke either. My health is shredding but not seriously, not yet, even though I lost four months to a bad leg problem that wouldn't let me walk without considerable pain. That turned out to be a virus, an odd thing and my affected nerve is still damaged if pain free. I am losing things like a few teeth and good eyesight and a little hearing.

Because I am in AA, I have many friends with whom I share common ground of a sort, and at least one friend who is there for me close to daily. Because of these blogs I can count a few more who touch me daily, who might actually care should I stop posting. I have a readership. I know I do because the count is there.

Later Phases

Phases of the moon,
my heart's song shadows behind
the shifting sun's bright
white glare, the knife edge
of the shadow line passing
across my old skin.

I was placed like you
some time past amid questions,
chasing all the not
yet things still ahead,
coming awake filled with light
spilling out of me.

This is why I love
you now, the perfume you wear,
the songs on your breeze.

August 13, 2009 11:57 AM