A Balancing Game

What do I write about tonight?

Something short, intelligent and brimming with wisdom 

~ or not. 

While my head 

senses my balance, 

I sense my discomfort, 

my lack of balance. 

Where does it come from ?

The inner ear, 

some kind of brain function 

 ~ both in agreement?

Or maybe something unknown?

Regardless, balance was restored 

by a good chat with a friend this afternoon 

and an evening out with other women 

to discuss matters of entertainment and food 

while watching others win door prizes.

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, 

then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.”

~ Robert Fulghum,

(Author of All I Really need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

Hard Knocks

When age comes upon us 

as more than a number, 

when our youth has passed, 

our adulting years, 

when we come to the years 

when we were supposed to

become wise we find that 

wisdom is nothing more than 

lessons from 

the School of Hard Knocks

through the years that have 

slipped by and through us. 

“If you can learn from hard knocks, you can also learn from soft touches.”

~ Carolyn Kenmore, from Daily Peace, 

National Geographic Society, 2015

The Ask

“What is my poem tonight, Mister?” 

A nickname I’ve taken to calling him.

I speak to my big black kitty 

as though he would have a 

wise and profound answer for me. 

Instead, he merely replies 

a fullsome meow. Translated it means:

 

“Time for you to feed me.” I remind him 

that he still has 10 minutes to wait and

wrapping himself around my legs in affection 

(the bribe) will not bend this strict custodian and friend.

“Cats seem to go on the principle that 

it never does any harm to ask for what you want.”

~ Joseph Wood Krutch, writer, critic and naturalist

(1893 - 1970)

The Wisdom of Children

 

Ideals render us strong ~ 

shining and firm in resolve 

until that resolve becomes 

stiff and unyielding ~ 

until a little child asks us 

why 

and we have no answer.

“When the wings of idealism break, may you land safely on your feet.”

~ Terry Guillemets, Age Fall, 2009

Where Do I Go?

Where do I go when 

the argument becomes 

reddened with anger?

Can I find the place 

where roiling, boiling 

waters have calmed?

Following the seasons, with 

storms and destruction, 

stepping into shelter is wise.

Shelter within my soul until 

my mind can be at peace, my 

words become measured and kind.

“Anger is an acid than can do more harm to the vessel in 

which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

~ Mark Twain

A Silly Verse

And elephant rides are also good things to do.

Marmalade march is 

a very odd pair 

marmalade is spread 

on toast you see

while a march is 

marched on two good feet. 

Momentum needs

those two good feet 

with a marmalade prize 

for a delicious treat.

“A wise bear always keeps a marmalade sandwich 

in his hat in case of emergency.”

~ Paddington Bear

Shadow Song

I have carried regrets ~ 

the maybe’s and what if’s ~ 

carried them carefully tucked

in my pocket or back pack, 

sheltering them 

as though they were sugar - 

if they got wet they would 

melt and dissolve away ~ 

What if they did?

What would be missing? 

Merely a shadow ~

only the weight of the past.

What wisdom will it impart ~

that shadow of past lives that 

deserve compassion, 

compassion for who I was then, 

even if it was only 

yesterday or 40 years ago. 

So I take the lint from my pockets, 

the crumpled tissues from my back pack 

where old regrets reside.

Setting them out in the sun 

I watch them thaw, dissolve and evaporate 

into the nothingness that they always were.

If I’m not careful, I may just catch a tiny 

piece of regret and just before it vanishes; 

hide it in the folds of my life. 

Yet when sunlight leans over my shoulder,

the shadow pen writes with me 

in a new harmony of words. 

“The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.”

~ Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation

Know One Truth

There is no one truth about family 

only the truth from the height of a 

5 year old or a 12 year old with the

wisdom that has come of that age. 

Sisters and brothers are always part 

of it, unless you’re an only child 

but then there are cousins that extend 

like arms to play and share the secrets 

that they believe about their parents. There is no one truth about family. It 

wavers and changes as we grow, trying to keep us as the children we were, so we still know the truth about our family. 

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.”

~ Anthony Brandt

Waiting

Wisdom does not wait for anyone to get  it. “Older and wiser” is the saying.  Still we don’t get it no matter how old we get. 

We just have more life experience and that assumes that we have figured out the 

meaning of all our mistakes and glory 

of our achievements. There might be meaning gleaned from our mistakes if we ignored being ashamed that we weren’t 

perfect. But then we’d have to admit to 

being human and where would that 

get us. And then there is glory. There 

might be a burst of excitement when 

an exam is aced, or when some obstacle 

is overcome. There might even be 

someone patting us on the back to tell us 

how great we are, how far we’ve come. 

But none of that is wisdom. In fact, I’m 

not sure I could even draw a picture of 

wisdom. I never was good at drawing faces, 

but I think that my grandparents or anyone 

much older than me may have been wise. 

But then they had to grow up too, so maybe 

they didn’t know what wisdom was either. 

So I’ll just accept the ‘older and wiser’ saying 

and wait till I get older to learn more about it.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

~ Saint Augustine