Today is a “Robe Day” for me…
no need to go
outside for anything,
so I’m staying in my robe, and loving it.
Every day swishes by with sweetness:
“But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying
near;”
I always
remembered
that line
from Andrew Marvell’s poem,
“To His Coy Mistress”,
wherein he was, well, seducing her!
I was a twenty-something,
studying English poetry,
and while the phrases resonated,
they didn’t reach
down into my core,
my heart and soul.
I had to be
this age, this appalling age of 76,
to understand the sound
of that chariot in
my ear.
But I can also take some consolation
in Marvell’s closing
stanza:
"Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
..........
Thus, though we cannot make our
sun
Stand still, yet we will make him
run."
I don’t
take those closing lines
to mean that I should mindlessly rush
through my remaining days.
I
like to feel that they mean
we will blaze through our race with the sun,
keeping that sun hopping,
as we “tear our pleasures”.
Funny how these words
popped up in my
subconscious,
and how their context,
my “advanced” age,
enhances their meaning.
Most
studies declare
that the happiest part of our lives
is usually our last years.
Despite the encroaching physical insults
rendered by age
(arthritis, canes,
incontinence, blah, blah, blah.),
our mental state
remains serene and blooming.
More than at any other time in my life,
I am
really at peace.
I don’t experience the
explosive love
I felt for my infant and toddler children….
that was a joy never
to be equaled.
But I no longer chase after that joy
(I couldn't run or chase
on these aging legs anyway)
But I WILL
“make much of my time”,
as another poet, Robert Herrick,
blatantly seduced poetically in
“To Virgins, To Make Much of Time”
He proudly advertises his lechery in the title:
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
............
Then be not coy, but use your
time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.”
Oh, those
leering 17th Century British poets—
what sly cunning charmers they
were!
They were
the proponents of the
“Carpe diem” philosophy,
to “Seize the day”
(THIS day,
this young day,
when all the world
is fresh and bright and possible).
How interesting to me now
that I still remember
these poems so well,
William
Wordsworth
also struck me with these words:
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
So, THAT can be my comfort and my strength:
“What remains behind.”???
That is
indeed
why
this time of life is sweet
….and bittersweet…
We can look back on a
life
full of everything….
and still
savor not just
these memories,
but the flavor and joy
that still lingers in our
heart.
Huh....
I do
believe that I AM
having “the time of my life”
right now!
