February 2021
Bio Note: We’ve been in very hard times, that promise to continue for some time. Thankfully, there is
poetry. I continue to zoom in to readings, and my long time group which meets twice a month. I continue to try for
a daily walk. I focus on birds and skies and music. Let us keep writing and sharing and know that love wins out.
Winter of My Sixtieth Year
As it turns out,
I am aged now!
With wrinkles my Grandmother once wore.
Like foil that was scrunched
into a fist, then opened,
to lay on bones as a face.
As it turns out, Grandma is long gone,
her daughter is now the old one
and the kind one,
holding the family together
with her care.
As it turns out, I don’t feel the wisdom
that you’d assume comes with wrinkles.
I feel instead, sometimes, clueless;
helpless; uncertain.
Was Grandma’s focus on collecting
beautiful teacups and rings a way to escape?
As it turns out, there’s a need to escape
the looming dread
of an uncertain future
for our children’s world.
One we’ll be leaving behind.
Morning Walk
Lacey seaweed, green on the tan shore, making rows of curves; fringing the water like a scalloped lampshade’s edge. Sparkling shells; the moon-shimmers; translucent disks some name “toenails” sprinkle shore line sand where the tide has pushed them, mapping out their own glittering galaxy, later to be criss-crossed by footprints of beach combers, and gulls. Where the waves ride the sandbar, they are line after line of charging white horses, engaged in battle, kicking dust at their feet. Shall I join them?
Originally published in Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Marjorie Moorhead 2020 Duck Lake Books)
©2021 Marjorie Moorhead
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