Party Talk
Peak experiences are transient
moments of self-actualization.
Abraham Maslow
A valet parks my car,
a doorman takes my coat,
a waiter serves my drink,
and the hosts greet me, send me
to a conversation cluster
in the paneled drawing room
Shy at such gatherings,
I came prepared, and ask,
Want to share peak experiences?
People jump right in,
compare ski trips to Aspen, the Alps,
helicopter drops in Canada,
and mastering moguls at Deer Valley.
I'm the hit of the party.
Smoky Mountain High
At daybreak in the Smoky Mountains
I saw my first fallen cloud—
Mother called it fog,
but it looked like heaven
dropped down to look around.
The billowing snowy-white beckoned,
promising cotton candy tastes if
I could reach it before the sun
took it back to become
just another cloud in the sky.
|
Psychologist, poet,
Hospice of SLO volunteer . . .
|
What's It Like To Be Old?
Don't get me started? Why do you ask?
Am I defensive? Yes. Of course I want
to slide back, get a re-ride, slip into that
beautiful body I failed to appreciate.
I'm still that girl, but no one else knows, and
I'm stuck at restaurants with birds of my feather,
a misfit, flocked with a covey of old folks,
as I imagine myself with the youth passing by.
I didn't join. I got drafted, drafted into
wrinkled wisdom, unscrewed, even screwy
with perspective and perception, but deliver me
from red hats and wearing purple. See me shop
the Banana Republic, flirting with dudes.
I'm not so old that I don't remember teenage pain—
turned inside out by what I thought others thought.
A pawn of my id, I craved love and attention,
making those years a playground of despair,
hope and disaster, love and loss.
As a teenager thirty was curtains and sixty,
suicide time. Do you really want to know?
Well, so do I. I'm still learning at seventy.
Ninety is the new old age. I'm in my prime.
|
