I have already posted these two poems by my late first wife on a thread of Poems about aging; but I think they will bear repetition here ~~

NOCTURNE


A phalanx  of old ladies
Each wheelchair like a throne
Sit doped and dozy in the Kozy
Kare Retirement home.
Our hair's time-bleached to monochrome,
Our teeth are not our own;


   Since it's got so hard to chew,
   We live on tablets, mince and stew.

Precarious, this refuge
(Eight hundred pounds a week) 
Meant selling off the bungalow
In Frinton, not Mustique:
We're better placed than plenty,
But the present's pretty  bleak. 


We're stuck with nothing much to do;
   Our visitors are none or few.

Time was we went to dances,
Our hair in lacquered curls;
In sugar-stiffened petticoats,
We executed twirls.
Oh, how we used to jitterbug,
When we were pretty girls!


Valerie Grosvenor Myer ( 1935-2007)







Sing a song at sixty
Winner of 2nd prize (£300) in a poetry competition


It is too late alas to learn a musical instrument,
To become a downhill racer on skis or compete at Wimbledon;
I shall never be able to read Dostoievsky in the original.
I have not won any cups for achievement,
And so many things I dreamed of will never happen: 
I shall never achieve my own chat show on television,
Or dissolve gracefully into artful tears, clutching my Oscar.

I must reconcile myself to clothing which is 
Comfortable rather than glamorous,
And acknowledge that hair-dye after sixty is usually a mistake.
I refuse to lament the loss of my beauty and my slender waist,
Instead I will be grateful that I retain my teeth, 
More metal than ivory, it must be frankly admitted,
Propped, pinned, posted and padded with plastic, 
But I can still eat with them.

I will be glad that that I was not born in the Dark Ages 
Before the invention of spectacles. I will not agonize
Over tests I have failed, but will concentrate on remembering 
The ones I have passed, and the people who have loved me.

It is futile to lie awake brooding over old animosities.
It is time to forgive one's parents, and to contemplate the young 
Not with envy but with tender concern and generosity,
Betraying no awareness of how vulnerable they are.

Valerie Grosvenor Myer (1935 - 2007)
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