by lil

Dear Hubski,

Begin a poem with "This is what it's like" and see where it takes you. _refugee_, Cumol, humanodon, thenewgreen, mk, rezzeJ, mivasairski, TheGreatAbider16, OftenBen, coffeesp00ns, ButterflyEffect, flagamuffin, tacocat, steve, weewooweewoo, nowaypablo Complexity lil -- and everyone else who has a heart of poetry... all of us.

Here's mine:

This Is What It's Like

  This is what it's like to be older
  and back in the town where I grew up

  The teller compliments the woman ahead of me
  for the colour of her top
  The woman, in her 70s or 80s, 
  much older than me, 
  recites lines of
  "When I Get Older I Shall Wear Purple"
  And adds, "The poem's about never being allowed to be yourself.
  Now that I'm old
  I do what I damn well please."

  And I linger in the supermarket
  over the fresh squeezable oranges,
  but instead buy a carton of juice for the boyfriend
  not wanting to be doctrinaire
  about anything, even orange juice.
  
  And being back in the town where I spent
  some of my 30s, I see a woman I used to know
  an artist, also much older now.
  She was part of some of the drama of those days -- 
  drama we get into when adventure is
  more interesting than security
  and intensity looks a lot like
  intimacy.

  and then I remember her mural "April Dawn"
  commissioned for the new cancer ward.
  Before the opening party, I told her,
  if I go into labour and miss 
  seeing the mural
  I'll name the baby, April Dawn.

  But I went into labour a few hours later
  at the afterparty,
  and the baby stayed nameless for days.
  
  This is what it's like to be back
  in a town where I went to high school
  and left, and returned, and left again.  Nick
  Cave's "Rings of Saturn"
  is the sound track now:  this is the moment, this is
  exactly where she is born to be
  and now I'm older and people are going back
  to the places they left.

  And this is what it's like:
  I sit outside.  It's warm, like summer,
  but it's October in Canada.
  The unusual will become usual as
  tiny birds with blue-striped wings
  fill the large pine tree beside me.
  I've never seen these birds before.

  This is what it's like.