See
by Michael R. Burch

See how her hair has thinned: it doesn’t seem
like hair at all, but like the airy moult
of emus who outraced the wind and left
soft plumage in their wake. See how her eyes
are gentler now; see how each wrinkle laughs,
and deepens on itself, as though mirth took
some comfort there, then burrowed deeply in,
outlasting winter. See how very thin
her features are—that time has made more spare,
so that each bone shows, elegant and rare.
For life remains undimmed in her grave eyes,
and courage in her still-delighted looks:
each face presented like a picture book’s.
Bemused, she blows us undismayed goodbyes.

Keywords/Tags: Elderly, woman, grandmother, thin, thinning, hair, airy, emu, moult, soft, plumage, wrinkles, laugh lines, frail, gaunt, bones, winter, grave, eyes, courage, laughter, family, gathered, bedside, kisses, hugs, goodbyes, farewells, life, death, photo album, pictures, photos, photographs

Published by The Eclectic Muse, Love Me Knots (an anthology of the top 100 contemporary love poems), Nutty Stories (South Africa), Black Medina, The New Formalist, Better Than Starbucks, Potcake Chapbooks, Strange Roads, Sonnetto Poesia, Litera (UK), Poems About, Poetry Life & Times, MahMag (in a Farsi translation by Dr. Mahnaz Badihian), Somewhere Along The Beaten Path (Anthology), Freshet, Life & Legends, Famous Poets & Poems, Short Quotes & Poems (listed in the top 10 short poems) and Victorian Violet Press. “See” won 3rd place in the 2003 Writer’s Digest Rhyming Poetry contest, out of over 18,000 overall entries, and was published in Writer’s Digest’s The Year’s Best Writing.

Eloquence has an heir
embrace winter
she has a Sterling
head of hair.

Yes, I'm 65, now elderly,
That's the term, officially,
One day, shopped locally,
Bought a lotto, luckily?
Someone wins tonight, says she,
Dear God, why can't it be me?
Yes, yes, this lotto is lucky,
Wait for the draw, breathlessly,
Anticipate now I am elderly,
Old folk can be winners too, says she,
This is going to be my lucky night,
If I win, I can sort the bill for the light,
Getting old is not for hissy fits,
Come on, lotto, let's have a bit!

Skinny, papery, wrinkled, and pale
Running a rosary through her fingers
The air shimmers, balmy ocean waves that never cease
From the shaded marble step, I ask:
“Why do you suffer rituals out in the scorching sun?”
“My child, that’s how it’s always been done.”

She has taken Times test
And stood till she was 80
The skin is thin on those old bones now
She shivers
And for the first time feels
old and frail

Old-man at the grocery
transfers his bags from motor-cart
to push-buggy. I stop to ask
if he might like some help.

‘No,’ he says, and in his age
I see defiance,
refusal to give up
what little control
he still maintains.

'I’m good,’ he affirms
before he directs his fragility
out into the dark parking lot–
out into the cold.

Way out,

further than one would walk
where there are no sidewalks
and the side of the road is dust and thorns and small tiny melons of no consequence and occasional vultures become more-often-than-not vultures

where there is nothing but walnut groves and train tracks,

three of us found a place to cut loose

and be the punks we hoped to be.

Way out,
we found a few patches of weeds,
abandoned farm equipment,
decayed everything,
a toppled barn,
and a dry canal,

so we brought spray paint,
****** beer,
and threw rocks at passing trains.

We built bonfires and howled
no one cared.

Until an old man in a wrinkled hat  
pulled his truck in to the tall grass
and watched us.

We hid our cigarettes as if he cared.

I walked over to check
but before I could give some poor excuse for our behavior,
he said,
“I was born here.”

Here?
This place was nothing. It was way out.
Old silos, maybe.
No houses.
No town.
No place to be born.
Just a place for kids like us to scrawl graffiti on pallets and rusted forgotten truck trailers.

“Used to be a town,” he said.
“Your standing in the post office.”
At my feet a cement slab crumbled into the white dust.

It is here that I wish this poem was about a tender moment
where an old man taught a young man about some hidden past.
Or that this poem reminded us about the secrets hidden all around us, if we just look.

It could be about a regained wonder for our elders or about memory or a certain flower that he pointed out which blooms in the ghost towns of our nostalgias and how that flowers Latin name means something that becomes a grand metaphor for rebirth...

But it’s not and he drove off without another word.

We picked up our spray paint and threw beer bottles against the canal bank, shattering them in a place no one would notice
except that old man,  
who would see my vulgarity
and poor attempt at protest haphazardly sprayed
over the last place he can remember seeing his mother, by the backdoor,
that autumn evening he left and took that job in Sacramento.

If we're together
When we're older,
If one's not left for another,
If one's not dead,
Or out of sorts
Or imprisoned on an institutional bed;
Let me tell what lies ahead.

We'll go to sleep wearing socks,
And rise by our internal clocks;
While on walks we'll hold hands,
And listen while the other talks.
We'll sit content by the St. Clair River
In Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

We'll have our tea and buttered toast,
On weekends enjoy your Sunday Roast.
Around the table our children sit,
With grandkids we're blessed to be with.
Then, in the evening, when all are gone,
And we're in our home of homes,
I'll confess my love again;
You're all I've wanted all along.

Old women
Old women
Bent over
Or straight
Bony thin women
****** women
Soft but deflated
Old women
Sitting alone
Holding a plate
Of half-eaten food
Of all-shattered prospects
Of blowzier days
Romance and contexts
That never materialized
Or did
But then vanished
Or slipped away
Leaving so many
Silenced and banished
Useless as pennies
Sitting in corners
Under old women shawls
With little to do

But hold onto plates

Old women
Old women
Boarders in
Somebody’s house
Or some institution
On somebody’s orders
Or out on the street
In old woman confusion
Holding a plate
To hold onto something
Old dried up promises
Lingered impressions
Of young women hopes
Things that once mattered
All in the past
Leaving old women tattered
Trying to atone
For young women sins
For whatever they did
To be so alone
Or whatever they didn’t
In those
Rare lucid moments
Old women quicken

Still holding their plates

Old women
Old women
Hide old
Beating hearts
Beneath sour old garments
Old women scarves
Hide old women failings
Hold old women tongues
Against old women wailing
Of things that have gone
With unsteady fingers
Still gripping plates
To show themselves living
To avoid being left
- Tho’ some old women prefer -
For the old women train
Taking old women wherever old women go
To never return
Around an old women curve
The young never see coming
Are never prepared
To face old women shaken
By old bodies broken
Of old women forsaken

Hold onto your plates