B ecause the cookie store was only three minutes from my house, and it smelled like heaven. Because the cookies were still warm and the soft, doughy middles and the melted chocolate chips tasted like heaven. Because I didn’t eat them all at once (because my heart might not take that). Because I ate just a tiny piece and saved the rest for later. Because there would be more tears later. Because my horse died that day, and I didn’t see it coming. Because he was given a clean bill of health just two days before. Because that morning he ate all his hay and his timothy pellets with gusto. Because I turned him loose in the round pen and asked him to move in circles around me. Because he was nineteen years old, and he knew the drill. Because his lips were closed tight, his head up like a sail, and he covered the ground with his hovering strides. Because he was strong and beautiful like that. Because the morning was cool and the movement was easy. Because no alarm went off to tell us to stop. Because he hit the side panel and one back leg curled up, and I thought it was broken. Because he fell to the ground and all four legs went limp. Because he was shaking, and I sat by his head and stroked his soft cheek and told him what a good boy he was while he breathed his last breath. Because he’d carried me safely for seventeen years. Because the cowbirds rose from their roost on the rails and circled and spiraled above where he lay. Because I was numb when the woman arrived with a trailer and winches to pick up his body. Because she looked at his handsome fit frame and said, “This isn’t right.” Because she took him away and I don’t know where and I don’t care because it wasn’t him anymore. Because his pen is now empty in a row of pens holding horses. Because my heart now has an emptiness I don’t know how to fill.
I’ve been searching all day for a little piece of heaven.
Because all good horses go to heaven, don’t they?
Author's Comment
The world, with all its splendor and all its heartbreak, gives writers an endless mishmash of material to dig into and pass from hand to hand until some essence is left that inspires words to flow. With my writing, I strive to create little pieces of beauty with words. In this case, the use of anaphora helped me access and process difficult emotions in real time.
Older Wiser Shorter: The Truth and Humor of Life after 65 (Revised)
by Jane Seskin, LCSW
Older Wiser Shorter is an intimate collection of 89 poems from Jane Seskin, a working psychotherapist and author. Seskin, authentic, funny, insightful, quirky and heartfelt, acknowledges the disappointments, physical vulnerability and emotional loss taking place in her senior years. She is able to discover within herself a solid sense of power, resilience and new-found joys through her struggles to acknowledge, accommodate and accept her aging. Seskin's ability to make the very personal universal, will resonate with readers seeking to discover new ways to honor the past, celebrate the present and welcome the future. A Reading Guide to the poems will inspire further reflection and discussion for book and women's groups.
Praise for Older Wiser Shorter:
“Even tho I’m not a fan of poetry, I found Jane Seskin’s poems to be a delight. They hit home.”
— Jane Brody, former Personal Health columnist, New York Times
“I sat down to read one poem last night and I ended up reading half the book. I feel as though I know you. You have definitely captured the experience of aging.”
— Mary Pipher, author of Women Running North and My Life in Light
“Candid, funny, and best of all inspiring, the poems in Jane Seskin’s Older Wiser Shorter throw open a window on aging. Suddenly a breeze of resilience sails through. I learned from Seskin’s poems; they became like mentors for the strange adventure of late-life living. Kindness infuses them. The ‘enormous optimism’ of this intrepid book might prove the greatest wisdom of the ages.”
— Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst
Paula Brown is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in the Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Anthology Nature, Wising Up Press Adult Children Anthology, Adirondack Review, Whitefish Review, South Dakota Magazine, and North Dakota Quarterly, among others. She lives in Tucson with her husband and a pack of dachshunds.