Field Note 2: How Not to Kill Your Grandmother

I've been reading "Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People" by Margaret Morganroth Gullette.  I didn't remember she has also written Agewise which is on my shelf!  Her writing is a brilliant mix of vitality, conviction and discernment. Many new ideas were unveiled, yes, revealed and made more clear, that put this bias carefully alongside of sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, racism, and middle-ageism (a term Gullette invented along with other turns of phrase such as "decline ideology", "aging-beyond-youth", and from the writings of others such ideas as "epidermalization", "visual culture" and "youth supremacy"....I think you get the gist.)  For years I have been listening to age.  Many of my poems retell how I am experiencing and walking through this beingness, gingerly finding my way.

M agn et ic F i e l ds

Sit at the crossroads
messages are flying across
some in grooved and trodden paths.
Sit and notice the old ways
knee-deep so way-worn.
But you, crone,
have time on your side,
never too late (ironic)
no one is watching.
Turn your head on its neck
and cast your glance toward
the overgrown beauty
of the small-way,
step there, the rabbit-way
don’t look back!
Put “Notice!” on your wrist
and forehead.
Blink toward now.
Grace will find you
and tug you gently or push,
so to gain enough distance
that magnet and field weight
begin to disperse and let go.

New Vows

among the liver and spleen
I am not anchored
by these blood-filled organs

within the movement of knees and wrist
I am not confined to any age

by my hand outlined in charcoal
by my story told in verse
by my humility still enlarging
by my face, by my faults
I vow to love the world
among and within these
bright days, simmering.

Benign being to you and growing awareness of wholeness.