There’s No Hill To Go Over; It’s good all the way
When I was 20
They said my thirties
Would be the best years of my life
Thirties were stormy
And certainly not the best
They were hard and painful
I grappled through somehow
And there were the beautiful times
Oh God, heartbreakingly tender
Magic minutes in time
Flash frozen images on my soul
Still on a search for…
What?
But getting closer anyway
Hit forty running and ran that decade
Even made history a time or two
They said that’s over the hill
But it was not
I blasted into forty with my foot in it
Forties were fantastic
One of my best decades
Fifty, I admit, was at first hard to accept,
At first…
That’s when one must face
More than half is usually gone
But the fifth decade was good
I traveled and grew
Oh, the things I came to know
Sixty…nobody said was great
But it turned out to be anyway
In many ways the best
At sixty I hit stride
Now I’ll be 69 this month
This very month of August
And nobody is telling me a damn thing
I don’t already know
Since I’m a wise old crone
And I been places and endured things
Most cannot imagine
If I live to and through my seventh decade
I’m pretty sure
It’s going to be glorious.
Since I am gloriously alive
A well-weathered, fully developed
Fired and honed woman
Yes, of substance
A compilation of all I’ve lived
And age will not shame me
I will instead celebrate
Come on seventies
Here there is peace
I’ve been vetted and refined
And age carries no fear or dread
I survive, no not just
I live and live big
In full feathered flamboyance
Until I do not
That is all.
