On Becoming an Elder

A bodice cinched in deep red velvet

An ivory white throat gathered in battenberg lace

Porcelain hands garnered with ice blue diamonds

And delicately slender toes couched in soft doeskin slippers.

Though once they were my inner child's dream

these are the things that I am not.

No velvet can cinch the mid-life drift of my waist

No lace can gather the fiftyish sags at my throat

No diamonds can compliment the puckering of my housework hands

And doeskin would look downright ridiculous on these blistered and broken toes.

Though far they be from my inner child's dream,

these are the things that time has wrought.

Where velvet would enfold, cotton knit bulges

Where lace would ruffle, turtlenecks disguise

Where diamonds would sparkle, dust from chalkboards dulls

And where doeskin would caress, rubber soles cushion my fallen arches.

Though for long I held an inner child's dream

these are the things that time has brought.

And so to you will come a time of passing--

A time to undress the child and wear the wrap of age.

And if you will be happy, and healthy, and whole--

Let her go, let her go, let her go. . .

D. K. Harper 1993

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