On Aging (and Partial Recall)

On the occasion of my 41st birthday, it seemed appropriate to share these two poems written in the wake of last year’s more traumatic numerical adjustment.

“On Aging” is a bit angsty, but regular readers of this blog will rightly suppose that as I’ve enjoyed this recent season of emotional rejuvenation and reconnection, I’ve become less worried about all of this than I was several months ago.

“Partial Recall” is a lighter-hearted tip of the cap to the (often detrimental) effects of time and life on memory, inspired by a visit to The Huntington Gardens a while back.

I’m tremendously grateful to have had 41 years thus far, filled with family, friends, a wide variety of opportunities to engage in meaningful work and creative endeavors, plenty of adventures, and lots and lots of learning experiences!

On Aging

When did I decide
that the only way to prove
     I’d learned
     from past mistakes
was not to make any new ones?

What impelled me to start checking
     and rechecking
doubting
     revising
     and tempering
every word
     each decision
     any hint of emotion?

While it’s true I do not miss all
     of youth’s impetuosity
     and drama,
and some of this newfound caution
     may well be wisdom—
     or akin to it, at least—
I pray maturity does not come
     at the expense of courage—
that fear does not make me a fossil
     before my time
nor the specter of imperfection
     leave me no more than a shell
     of the flesh-and-blood woman
     I once felt certain
          I could become.

© 2013
Alexis Spencer-Byers

Partial Recall

The groundskeeper who rakes
     fallen petals and leaves
from the gravel walkway
     in the Shakespeare Garden
calls to mind Hamlet’s gregarious grave-digger,
but capricious memory—
     weighed down and distracted
     by myriad tasks waiting impatiently
          to be done
     not to mention countless slights
          and bits of silliness
          much better forgotten—
cannot conjure more than a faded image
     of a skull,
a few fragments of that most famous
     existential soliloquy
and the non-specific sense
     that Shakespeare’s humor
     was always a bit earthier
     than one expected it
          to be.

© 2013
Alexis Spencer-Byers

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