In your decades-long trek, you finally finished supporting him to success–you did everything day and night with bright smiles and affirmations and went to all the promotion parties, smiling with frozen face. And you took him to doctors and nursed him, finally, supervising the day and night nurses, and at last put him to rest.

At the same time, you also supervised the children’s development: diapers. discipline, school meetings, homework; worry over adolescent sex protection, cars, drugs, unsavory friends; graduations, weddings, baby showers, birthdays, massive holiday gatherings, endless grandmotherly duties. Now you wave—another Sunday dinner vanquished—as they, laden with leftovers, pull out of your driveway. You turn away and sigh with relief, eager for the quiet.

For years you were also an informal caregiver and pseudo-parent to your own parents and other elders. You visited; brought groceries, DVDs, Depends; murmured false reassurances, even while aghast at how the elders looked paler and paler. You finally saw them settled in private rooms at institutions where meals and daily care were provided by others and they could play cards with fellow inmates— their forced smiles disguising the wish that their longtime friends would visit. You went every Saturday, straightened their sheets, shared morsels about the grandchildren, smiled, and never stayed for more than an hour.

You finally made peace with your house: rug worn, curtains frayed, outlets dead, cupboard doors askew . . . . You have a good bed, a comfortable sofa, a reliable TV, and kitchen appliances that work. What else is needed?

And most importantly—hardly believable—you have time. Time for exploring your thoughts, feelings, and metaphors long buried by the demands of doing for others. You discover a new, almost unbelievable spark, a blossom, flower, lightning flash—power undeniable, as if a younger poet were writing (mirror be damned).

You take the time—relish, bask, embrace and savor it, like the sublime apple cobbler you used to make or a blessed fragrant spring breeze after rain, still hardly believing.

You have time for keyboard and notebook writing; even, grabbed by sudden inspiration, scribbling on random scraps while eating, thinking about next lines between bites. You have time to read articles on better craft, to Zoom with other women poets, share work and travails and publishing leads (and, when your older women poet friends publish, congratulate them grudgingly).

Swallowing hard, you start submitting your work and—at last—publish! Then what you never dared dream: an award for best older woman poet, another for a new poet voice, another and another and, crowning it all, publication of your collected poems.

What’s age in the unquenchable, irrepressible drive to create? What’s age in the blessings of words, swelling cascading bubbling up like a long-dry spring coming to life? What’s age in the intoxication of creating—phrases at odd hours, titles in the shower, rhymes stirring stew, perfect whole lines appearing like goddesses?

Older women poets, I praise admire salute you and, as a fellow older poet, draw heart from you to continue our glorious creativity.

 

 

Love Letters to the Wild

by Janet MacFadyen

    Love Letters to the Wild traces the essential bond between human beings and the natural environment. The letters and poems of this volume are book-ended by two long letters, beginning with storm clouds in Death Valley and ending at the poet's home during a catastrophic deluge. The book sets a personal joy and gratitude against a hunger for belonging, and against the relentless destruction of all that is non-human. "Janet MacFadyen’s newest collection seeks and invites us to be “pried open,” to “see how leaves underfoot lay down their bodies as a sentence.” The letters of this collection—to storm clouds, woods, gray light, wasps, an old house—seek to still time…for a moment of reckoning with fish, swans, squirrels, wind, and chickadees. I’m grateful for this meditation, this call to attention.” — Elizabeth Bradfield, author of SOFAR: Poems, and co-creator of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry “…each of these lyrical pieces invites us back into embodied experience of the physical world, until we realize that we are every element that surrounds us—“the parched forest... cricket wings... a dried up stream.”... Spend some time with this gorgeous volume, and you will soon throw open the door, aching for more contact with the wild Earth again.” — James Crews, author of Unlocking the Heart For more, visit https://www.dosmadres.com/shop/love-letters-to-the-wild-by-janet-macfadyen/ Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and your local independent bookstore.

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