Friday 29 April 2011

A Meditation on Turning Fifty

This week, with the whole country covered in bunting and Union Jacks (how kind of everyone to decorate for my birthday), I celebrate reaching my half-century.  As a change from the clangour of royal wedding bells and revelations, here's a small poetic insight into how it feels to me....

Meditation on Turning Fifty

Why April is the cruellest month—well,
I’ve never understood Tom’s take on that.
I’m more of a Geoffrey goodwif, me.
My April has sweet showers, is mild, beneficent,
full of thrusting green and skylarks.
But if any April were to be cruel, it would be this.

Here I stand, damp and peeling
out of my first half-century carapace,
skin sloughing like a fat, burnt snake,
whirling and gurgling down the drain;
stripped and flaking evidence
of the life I’ve led so far.

Will the other side of April
be a slow slide down into darkness--
fifty dulled roots in a dead lilac land?  No.
I defy sad Tom and his heap of broken images.
Instead, I shall wear stockings of a fine scarlet red
to adorn my pilgrimage to winter.


7 comments:

Rupert Neil Bumfrey said...

Have a superb birthday weekend.

catdownunder said...

Happy Birthday and yes, wear red my friend!

Katherine Roberts said...

Celebrate, Lucy! Fifty is the new twenty...

Katherine Langrish said...

Hear hear!

Candy Gourlay said...

have a brilliant weekend, lucy ... my half century is coming next year! and in april too! you've got fab weather for it.

Stroppy Author said...

Happy birthday, dear Lucy. I'd like to say life after 50 is good - I hope it will be for you. But it's just a number, good or bad is unrelated to it. And Tom? Poor Tom's-a-cold. Take no notice of him, he's just the fool.

Lucy Coats said...

Thank you all. Much appreciated.

 
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