Monday, April 27, 2009

Middle Age


Here's a lovely poem from today's Writer's Almanac (and an old photo, looking back):

Foreseeing

by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it's simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won't go on
like this forever.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this, it is too true.

    None of us ever want to see the end.

    love Renee xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elizabeth I have been loving you and your family way before any kind of award came to the surface, so how would you know.

    Love Renee xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  3. That poem has the ring of truth to it. I see my life this way, too, now that I'm in middle age.

    ReplyDelete

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