Let It Be
Now I have to learn to nap
and wake up three times a night
Now I have to talk to bag boys
at the grocery store
who don’t know who wrote Let It Be
I talk to the flowers in my garden
I call them ‘my beautiful girls’
I hang out with butterflies and bluebirds
and hang up on the automated voices
that tell me how the menu has changed
Now I lose names and forget passwords
but not the lyrics to every song I’ve loved
Now the past and present
the losses and blessings
exist together all at once
___________Colleen Redman / Poets and Storytellers United
July 15th, 2022 12:53 am
Oh, I am doing all those things too! You’ve described it exactly. (“Natural deterioration due to ageing,’ says my doctor. ‘No sign of dementia.’ Whew!)
July 15th, 2022 3:00 am
Love that “my beautiful girls” bit… also the closing lines.. very nicely done!
July 15th, 2022 8:08 am
“losses and blessings
exist together all at once”.
Yes, these lines exactly why I rarely lose my cool about being chronically ill and about the loses that come with that knowledge. Even when things seem to be going to the dumps, I know that I can find wings to get myself out–if I search.
July 15th, 2022 8:57 am
Wow! Love this Colleen.. Your spirit shines as bright and as youthfully as ever… Regards Scott Let it be indeed – did you catch the long documentary that was shown earlier this year – I found it very heart warming…
July 15th, 2022 9:57 am
Haha … funny how the “menu” has changed no matter when you call. This whole lovely piece feels like “letting it be”.
July 15th, 2022 10:00 am
Flowers, butterflies, and bluebirds are much more pleasant company than an automated answering systems anyway. And thank goodness for services that organize my passwords because I’d be lost without mine. Some things inevitably are lost, but there are also small joys that can be found.
July 15th, 2022 11:04 am
I so identify with this poem! It’s all here, all now: the blessings, the banes, the losses, the gains. Alleluia!
July 17th, 2022 9:25 am
Well, we lose some, we gain some too.
There must be very few who doesn’t know ‘Let it Be’. 🙂
July 18th, 2022 3:16 pm
You have managed to make the adversities that magically appear when one hits 80 (in my case!) seem almost bearable. For this, I thank you and I shan’t forget this poem.
July 18th, 2022 9:35 pm
That’s me, lose names and forget passwords but not the lyrics to every song I’ve loved.” A lot worse post-COVID that we caught in March, on a cruise ship of all places. Other things are lingering too, can’t taste or smell, still phlegm and coughing. Well, I can taste chocolate.
But other stuff you named plus crumbling bones. But then Mom died a year younger than I am now but Dad lived to 97.
I enjoyed reading of all these ails, getting old is soso. We do slow down but make new friends. And stuff.
..
July 20th, 2022 8:48 pm
Sounds a lot like my story. Lyrics of favorite songs last longer than most memories.