Life Meal

Today’s draft came as I was working my way through George Ella Lyon’s poetry. The prompt for this day was “dry up and blow away.” I find much of my writing comes back to what’s happening in my own body as I shift deeper into menopause and all the pains and pleasures of aging. Part of me feels a compulsion to apologize for all this aging body stuff, but that part is easily distracted (and not in my best interest.) Poetry is about attention, and this is where my attention rests. Poetry, for me, is also about bringing attention to that which is hidden or ignored, in the hopes to make a more loving world.

Now that my existence is unlikely to spark desire in random strangers

I must be done.

I must be a shell, no longer contributing

to the juicy richness of a planet in motion.

Yet — rock exists.

Sand exists.

Ungrowing trees whose hollow insides shelter creatures and plants of the dark exist.

I exist, quietly becoming stone,

but active.

Sand, but alive.

The hollowed out grandmother tree sheltering

the next generation of juice makers and desire shifters.

Not dried up, blown away — hungry.

I will feed the hunger of this body for pleasurable tastes, gifts for the tongue.

I will feed at the trough of this life which

is mine, despite the slow creaking rise of my body in the mornings.

I hold this life like I am the mother of it, and the lover of it.

I consume it.

Come forward, life.

Let me lick the salt from your cheek after you have run to me,

hold you close enough to smell the biting fragrance of you.

This life is my meal and I will not go hungry.