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lost and found at tiny thing

the older 
The older I get, the more I feel
almost beautiful - not my face, plain
puritan face, but my body. And I will be
fifty, soon, my body getting
withery and scrawny, and I like its silvery
witheriness, the skin thinning,
surface of a lake crimped by wind, ruched
wraith, a wrinkle of smoke. Yet when
I look down, I can see, sometimes,
things that if a young woman saw she would
scream, as if at a horror movie,
turned to a crone in an instant - if I lean
far enough forward, I can see the fine
birth skin of my stomach pucker
and hang, in tiny peaks, like wet stucco.

And yet I can imagine being eighty, made
entirely, on the outside, of that,
and making love with the same animal
dignity, the tunnel remaining
the inside of a raspberry bract.
Suddenly, I look young to myself
next to that eighty-year-old, I look
like her child, my flesh in its loosening drape
showing the long angles of these strange
bones like cooking-utensil handles in heaven.
When I was younger, I looked, to myself,
sometimes, like a crude drawing of a female -
the breasts, the 1940s flare of the hips -
but this greyish, dented being is cosy as
a favourite piece of clothing, she is almost
lovable, now, to me. Of course, it is
his love I am seeing, the working of his thumb
over this lucky nickel - five times
five years in his pocket. Maybe
even if I died, I would not look ugly
to him. Sometimes, now, I dance
like shirred smoke above a chimney.
Sometimes, now, I think I live
in the place where the solemn, wild drinking
of coming is done, I am not all day coming
but all day living in that place where it is done.

Sharon Olds


other forces at work 
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.


dark thoughts 
In the light of day, my daughter is a survivor. She's strong, adaptable, and demonstrably resilient. I've provided for her; the will is signed, the custodial arrangements made. And I am pretty sure we won't be needing any of them. But still.
et al


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