poetry Archives - Aging, caregiving and the journey through the second half of life

My Digital Footpath…

September 24, 2020

Below is a blessing from the Celtic mystic, John O’Donohue that I am offering to all you who follow my spiritual wanderings on this digital footpath. Some of you I know and love. Your presence and friendship are divine scaffolding…

Mary Oliver’s Passing

January 19, 2019

I am a long time admirer of Mary Oliver’s poetry and was saddened by her passing last Thursday. When asked what she had done with her life, she was quoted as saying, “I learned how to love and be loved,”…

Inconvenient Eulogy

April 11, 2018

Inconvenient Eulogy by David Solie Even when things are going your way, Words don’t come easy on funeral day. Mourners turn up with guarded belief, Awaiting your words of pain and grief. But others arrive with their…

The Ceremony of the Shoes

December 13, 2016

Embedded in the living towards the end lies a narrative about love under fatal duress. It is a space that refines courage and fosters an unexpected elegance. Frannie Lindsay’s poem below is about how this elegance, born of love and…

Losing Your Way…

January 1, 2016

Caregivers are always beginning a new. It comes with the work. Time and again they are knocked off their balance point and scramble to find a way to get back up. The art of caregiver recovery is made easier with…

Wishes

October 27, 2015

Aging is like a zoom lens. The longer we hang around, the clearer we see what matters. We also see what was worth a second look or might be included in a second chance. Anne Porter’s poem “Five Wishes” is…

Anything But Dementia

October 23, 2015

The question “What Genuinely Terrifies You?” was posed on Reddit and the overwhelming consensus was not war, cancer or being destitute. It was dementia. One responder who goes by the name of Poem_for_you Sprog commented in verse, a sentiment that…

Poetry and Adult Children, Part 3

June 15, 2015

Below the perpetual buzz of our busy caregiving lives is another channel, softer in tone and kinder in character. We sense it in vertical moments where rushing and worrying get sidetracked, the chance second where life sparks back a fragment…

Toxic Parents and Adult Children

June 4, 2015

It’s the luck of the draw as to which childhood any of us inherit. Sometimes it’s filled with toxic parents who leave abusive tattoos that last a lifetime. Remarkably, they wind up under our care with the same bag of…

Poetry and Aging Parents, Part 4

March 31, 2015

Adult children live in a bittersweet world of loss and gratitude regarding aging parents. Barbara Crooker’s poem All Saints Day captures this emotional mixture as it attends her mother’s leaving… All Saints Day By Barbara Crooker It’s one day past…