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On Embarking On My Thirty-Ninth Year
by Heide McAlister-Bates
Three hundred sixty days left
to obtain the one thing I promised
myself before reaching forty.
Ive already wasted nearly a week,
too bowled over by the fact that
Im thirty-nine to do anything
remotely constructive.
Except laundry does laundry count?
Oh, and I cooked dinner and washed up -
several times.
I helped my daughter through an
existential crisis and gave to charity.
Read copious amounts of poetry
and made sweet, tender, deliciously
nasty love with my husband -
several times.
I know Ive wasted a lot of time -
ignored the clocks ticking.
Procrastinating, living in the moment.
Nurturing my dreams like newborn babies.
Walking with my head in the clouds.
Stopping to smell the roses and, occasionally,
to pick out the thorns.
Mostly putting off the have-tos
in favour of the want-tos.
Now its time to face the music or is it?
When I promised myself I would write the
novel of the century before I was forty,
how was I to know that so much would happen
between then and now?
How was I to know that really, I knew nothing at all
then?
And do I know anything now?
I know how to do laundry.
I know how to cook.
I know how to help my children
make sense of life.
I know how to make love to my husband.
I know how to put off til tomorrow
what could be done today, but wont be -
because my daughter, or my husband,
or a friend needs my attention.
I know how to dream.
I know about clouds.
I know about roses,
I know how to deal with thorns.
I know that forty isnt as old
as I thought it was then.
Will I write that novel this year?
Maybe and if I do, it will not be
because I have to,
But because I want to.
Forty is the new twenty, after all.
I still have twenty years, and
three hundred sixty days to play with
10/15/2004 Author's Note: A bit of prose in celebration(!)of my birthday last Monday.
Posted on 10/15/2004
Copyright © 2024 Heide McAlister-Bates
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Ashok Sharda on 10/15/04 at 04:36 PM Well, what matters is the time one 'lives' and not just spends. Time is after all synonym of life. |
| Posted by Charles E Minshall on 10/15/04 at 09:41 PM Happy birthday and may you have at least forty
more....Charlie |
| Posted by Max Bouillet on 10/16/04 at 04:03 PM I have never read so much wisdom in one piece. This is an excellent verse that catches the reader eye and heart. Very well crafted! :) |
| Posted by Gabrielle L Gervais on 10/17/04 at 12:50 PM this is wonderful! sounds like a delightful thing to me- Happy Birhday then! |
| Posted by Morgan D Hafele on 01/02/05 at 03:36 PM happy be-lated birthday. excellent read. |
| Posted by Laura Doom on 04/28/05 at 11:36 AM A familiar scene, acted out from a perceptively fatalistic script - yeh, I think you should make that a play :) |
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