Mobile Photography / Art – Saturday Poetry – Ageing- By Ruth Fainlight

i

Since early middle-age

(say around forty)

I’ve been writing about ageing,

poems in many registers:

fearful, enraged or accepting

as I moved through the decades.

 

Now that I’m really old

there seems little left to say.

Pointless to bewail

the decline, bodily and mental;

undignified; boring

not to me only but everyone,

 

and ridiculous to celebrate

the wisdom supposedly gained

simply by staying alive.

– Nevertheless, to have faith

that you’ll be adored as an ancient

might make it all worthwhile.

 

ii

Ageing means smiling at babies

in their pushchairs and strollers

(wondering if I look as crazy

as Virginia or Algernon –

though I don’t plan to bite!)

Realising I’m smiling at strangers.

 

It means no more roller-skating.

That used to be my favourite

sport, after school, every day:

to strap on my skates,

spin one full circle in place,

then swoop down the hill and away.

 

When I saw that young girl on her blades,

wind in her hair, sun on her face,

like a magazine illustration

from childhood days, racing

her boyfriend along the pavement:

– then I understood ageing.

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