Lately I find I want to get a handle on time,
A handle on the timeline of my life. I can't seem to keep track
of the events that I think define me; sometimes I feel, oh, childlike.
Or thirty.
Or nearly at the end of my path.
I was born in 1951 - can that be right? Smack in the middle of the 20th Century?
I started school in '56 or so, I suppose; I've been told, but don't remember.
I stopped school in 1969, just after the Summer of Love,
matriculated into marriage, got my "Mrs degree," as we used to smirk.
Now I have children
Older than I was then; and isn't that strange?
One went to the military, one went to Computer Science.
Now the one who went to the military knows all about computers
and the one who was born geek
plays at war on the weekends.
And their mother is lost in time,
Dreaming of days they never saw.
I'm past middle age, well beyond 3 score and ten divided in two.
Oh, to be that age again! No -
I wouldn't do it. This wandering in time's alleyways is far preferable
to the grim struggles of my 30s, the fears of my 40s.
I'll sing the sweet slow song of my sixties soon,
and bless every breath and note from my throat.
