Aging

Every day I grow a little more "old."

I become what "old" should be.

I fall into the dictate.

This is a choice

Perhaps even a concession

Perhaps a conviction.

The choice, concession, conviction

is freeing

It hides me away.

Me who had youthful lusts

Me who had ambitions

Me, I, who had hoped for love and fame.

I can escape now into old age

and succumb to contentment.

I was one who, as Hopkins states,

was marked when young

marked by death

marked for pain

And even in my youth I was never young.

That is what bothers me

I am to become old, having never been young.

I am to slump toward death, having never lived.

I was lovely once

But only for an instant.

I grew fat.

Loving eyes poured upon me once

But the wrong soul peered out at me.

I have felt joy some three or four times.

Mine has been an embattled life

And I fought valiantly, though badly.

Since youth

death and holiness were poured upon me

Against death, I fought.

For holiness, I fought.

When young.

But now...old age has come.

Wavering seas

You were always like that

Like fire and water.

They say the two do not mix.

But with you, they did.

Alternately passionate, burning everything before you

Then dousing it all, dousing us all

with waves of grief.

Your red hair too

curling around your face

like flaming waves

that the wind could not hold

like a fiery halo

surrounding a passionate angel's face

Poem: Candlesticks

My mother-in-law gave these to me on the day I got married.

Along with a conch shell, and something else i don't remember.

They were made of bronze, she said.

Had been in the family for years.

I imagined those candlesticks in their ancient setting

An embroidered or lacy white tablecloth flowing over a large rectangular table 

and the table itself laden with food to feast on.

Turkey, ham, lamb on the like.

For, in my imagination, the mood had to be festal.

Bronze candlesticks were not for everyday usage.

Only holidays, marriages, births, would call them forth.

Of all her gifts on that day

I preferred the conch shell most.

Unlike the candlesticks, it did not speak of my husband's heritage

It did not call me to be what my mother-in-law wanted me to be.

It called me to nature

to the sea

Looking at the candlesticks, 

I held my ears  to the roaring within the shell

and listened.

Poetry: On inheriting my aunt's house in Jamaica

This was my aunt's

This house

These gardens

These mango trees

In this yard

she walked, cooked, raised hell.

It was in that room there

that she argued with a ghost deep into the night

when he came and stood by our bed.

In our family

only ancestral ghost were allowed.

This was my aunt's

these apartments

this tenement

And there, there,

was where she cooked the corn meal porridge

she tried to feed me.

She was fierce about this place.

Hers! Hers! Hers!

Even on her deathbed, 

she railed against giving it up

Against giving life up.

Although her life was nothing much then

Only ravings, and jealousies, and ownership, and greed.

No, i do not think i want this house.

Not its lime trees

its luscious mangoes

its gardens filled with hummingbirds and hibiscus.

Wouldn't she begrudge even the smallest mango i place on my lips?

Wouldn't her ghost continually roam it?

And i have neither the spirit nor the stamina

To argue long into the night with an angry ghost.

Poem: Looking at my novel "The Constant Tower" which few have read

With conviction, hope, and endurance, i crafted this

I spun it from my heart

yes, and from illness too

And all my hope was intricately woven within it.

That is the way it is with most art

whether book or painting, music or dance.

For time, times, time and a half, we pour out our souls.

And, finished, we set it adrift

(without money or power, we can do little else)

We imagine a favorable wind 

or some kind wave

or a groundswell will toss our making into the world's heart

 

Now, finished -- finished seven years now and writing newer stories--

I am tired and sick at heart at the praises my famous friends receive.

My teeth and jaws ache when I see 

their lists and posts of acclamation.

I am not as kindly or as saintly as I should be

The happiness of the famous and acknowledged

is too great a burden for my unwhole and petty heart to bear.

My dear sweet perfect little book

you who contain so much of my heart,

although my fame and wholeness rested on you.

I did love you for yourself

 --for you are a thing of Beauty, and all who have seen you have praised you--

I grieve for you continually.