All those cycles of the seasons

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
~Madeleine L'Engle

Bookshop El Ateneo, photo by Josefina

Three poems from Women's Voices for Change: Redefining Life after Forty.

Used Book
by Julie Kane

What luck—an open bookstore up ahead
as rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,
and then to find the books were secondhand,
with one whole wall assigned to poetry;
and then, as if that wasn’t luck enough,

read the rest here

********

Word Pond
by Susan Kolodny

Go back, past the curtain of details, the wall
of chores, the grimy surfaces that obscure.
Go around the corners, under the broken fence,
crawl if you have to over moss, snail
slime, climb up the uneven hills

read the rest here

********

Her Art
by LaWanda Walters

I’d like to cry on Elizabeth Bishop’s shoulder.
I lost my mother’s engagement ring, for one thing.
Not your fault, she’d say. So much seems to want
to be lost. Even if, one day, in anger or grief
you threw it across the room or placed it somewhere
safe, the fact is, now, it’s gone. Just read my poem.

Remember? My mother’s watch was in that poem.
My losses are famous. Don’t cry on anyone’s shoulder—
even if I were available, I’m lost somewhere.

read the rest here

********

Carol's Corner has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Carol!