Passing Through — A Poem For Turning 69

 

Gradually, under the spell of gravity,
I’m changing
back into a handful of dust,
a handful, moreover, I borrowed.

I step out of the shower and look into the mirror,
and I have to laugh.
Still, there’s the human glue of touch,
the not-yet-joke of sex.

I’m only passing through, is how
the old hymn puts it, which my late aunt, Irma,
sang in the Springside Baptist Church, in gull falsetto,
with peacock gusto, and I, barely a fledgling, roared inside.

But the art of aging, which is the art of failing,
which is the art of losing, which is the art of accepting,
is hard to master, let alone, graciously.

I wake at 2AM and become my own bully:
fool, coward, failure, you could have done more with your life,
and before I imagine a bullet tearing through my cranium,
I silently recite Psalm 23.

Beside me, Deb is sleeping, softly breathing.
She is my true comfort. Yet, not always comfort enough.

We are living and dying at once.
I know this! I’ve said it in conversation when I was the age of my children.
Now, how comically different it sounds.

This strange spiral of years, like a towering tin trophy, teetering,
and I, scavenge the hours for pauses, to shore up its brittle pedestal.

And now I see my mother — smiling, amused by my youthful naivety.
Almost 92, she died full of grace,
happily content, as though eating cherries.

My father, who died at 73, liked to say, “young at heart,”
and I liked to hear him say it, right up until that surprising day.

At the cusp of my seventh decade, I’m learning to accept my death,
and wondering if I’ll see my aunt again. I’d love to hear her sing.
Then we’d get down to some gossip, over a cup of Postum.

Mom will be making sandwiches, homemade butter on homemade bread.
Dad, at the kitchen table, will be tilting back in his chrome-frame,
blue-vinyl chair, wearing two holes in the linoleum,
reading the Yorkton Enterprise.

I’ve read the science. Our collections of atoms, scattered, repurposed,
going on and on; but I’m not happy about the thought of atomizing.
Give me an afterlife, but with real fried bologna.

So just this morning, at Country Grocers, someone touched my arm,
and I melted, and I burned
to remain here, here, on this blue, blue, earth.

 

31 Comments

  1. Happy Birthday Stephen! What a gift you have. Being a mere 7 years your junior, I can relate. Those of us who know you and are sensitive to your prose wish you many more sweet and fruitful decades on this blue, blue earth!

  2. Enjoyed your recollections and musings about life and death
    Happy Birthday from your bother already in the latter half of threescore & ten

  3. I’m a just a couple of years ahead of you, Stephen, and I’m …

    Learning to Love the Evening
    By Marcia Lee Laycock

    Learning to love the evening
    the softer slant of light
    after the blaze of day

    Learning a slowness
    like a smile that lingers
    with deepened awareness of taste,
    touch, smell and sight

    Learning to love the longing
    at end of day that pulls like
    an eager tide that knows the song
    of returning

    Learning that even death has its beauty
    the silhouette of birds in a barren tree
    the layered light of a sky
    cradling the sinking sun.

  4. How poignant and tender and wise in its longing is this poem. Thank you, friend, for looking your life squarely in the face and sharing your view with the rest of us. May sweetness and love find you today.

  5. Thanks for sharing this vulnerable and insightful reflection. I relate to it all, but especially the gripping last stanza:
    “someone touched my arm,
    and I melted, and I burned
    to remain here, here, on this blue, blue, earth.”

  6. Those last few lines got me. I see in you a love for for life – for THIS embodied life – that I don’t see in so much religion. I hope for an afterlife too – but my impossible hope is that it just be more of the goodness found here. More sugar and salt and touch. More warm blankets on cold days and rough hands on long walks. Thanks for always being inspiring Stephen. Do you know I often tell friends I know a poet who can open a beer bottle with his eye socket?! Now that’s embodiment. It seems to me, if you’ve left any opportunities on the table, it’s been on pursuit of goodness over greatness. What you may have lost in breadth of influence (why your writing isn’t more widely known I’ll never know) you’ve surely gained in depth of impact. I hope I’m making those same choices, if and when they come my way. Much love today and the happiest of birthdays.

    1. Dave, thank you! Loved this little tribute, and I take it to heart. The “doing” of what we do, has to be enough, or it’s hollow. Thank you for your friendship, and I wish you the sky as you continue to make music.

  7. ‘Give me an afterlife, but with real fried bologna.’

    From one November baby to another – wishing you a very happy birthday and may we both have many more! Laurie xoxo

  8. Ahhh, Stephen. Your gentle writing is so articulate with observation, you have found the golden ticket to inspiration that makes me want to write more, be better. But first, I weep, smile, nod, sigh— that there is such a witness, so full of grace, empty of self, a cultivator of mercy. Thank you for this birthday gift to us.

  9. Fashionably late.. as always,
    How very lovely and life affirming, your words Stephen wash over one
    like a golden leaf slowly making its gorgeous rhythmic descent
    to the ground.
    And you my friend, have many more budding years
    to come.
    Very best be-lated birthday wishes to you dear Stephen,
    May love and kindness surround you always.

    Thank you for the gift
    of
    words -^-

  10. Again a happy birthday. I’m reading “How to inhabit time” by James K. A. Smith. I think you would enjoy it. He says we need to know when we are, not just where we are, and how we are the products of our times.
    And I agree – heaven should have fried bologna!

  11. Very nice Dad. Always like when you reference your kids. This is the one I’ll introduce to my grade 11s. Nice use of anaphora, alliteration and imagery among other literary devices they will need to identify or else I’ll fail ’em. 🙂

  12. Such beautiful words, as though I wrote them myself. I will be turning 69 in two days… mom died at 63, dad died at 68 … when I visit them in the cemetery I will have to tell them I beat them…

    Thank you Mr Berg, many blessings from above to you and those you love..

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