Who shall love?

TheFeatheredSleep

If you are not a beautiful creature

Is there love for you?

When the world appears bewitched by youth and eternal moment’s boiled to infuse

Who shall love?

Who shall love?

The imperfect and technically “past it”

When beautiful felt like;

The sound of heals clicking on marble

Then slippers

Then bare feet

Then silence

No attention for a certain shape, age, gaze

Consolation crows, grow your mind

Crack jokes

Have a sense of humor

Laugh at yourself.

Long before, boys fell in love with me first;

Because of an hourglass

A firmness

A tightness

A willingness

The measure of hips

And then later, aserbic wit

I say ignore the rules

Climb trees at sixty, chomping on cigar

Wear polkadots, rolling dice on roof tops

Make love in bramble hedges and countertops

We talk of politics and deep sea diving, the need for conscience, passion and chocolate biscuits

You didn’t need a perfect pair of legs or a tiny waist

Eventually you wanted a woman of four seasons

Who couldn’t hold her alcohol anymore and streaked across the lawn

A girl of seventy and four, mayflies buzzing in our ears

Who still beat you at arm wrestling and sang like an angel with grey hair

Opening her robe to your eager devour

For once upon, you were a youthful coward, chasing empty smiles

And now you lay in a woman’s arms marveling at her lines

The black and blue, and those she fought hard for, birthing children

Crossing her face like stars

More beautiful for their dance

On skin long past its prime and so fine

For a constellation is music over time

Then and only then, love breathes eternal

18 thoughts on “Who shall love?”

  2. This is a beautiful ode to ordinary people who are neither young nor good-looking to the dispassionate eye. We are all beautiful to those who matter.

  4. Wonderful! And, it reminded me of this favorite:

    Warning by Jenny Joseph

    When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
    With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
    And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
    And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
    I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
    And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
    And run my stick along the public railings
    And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
    I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
    And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
    And learn to spit.

    You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
    And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
    Or only bread and pickle for a week
    And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

    But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
    And pay our rent and not swear in the street
    And set a good example for the children.
    We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

    But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
    So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
    When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

  7. Wonderful, Candice. We are all lovable and deserve love. The task is finding the person to see the beauty within and in turn recognizing the internal beauty of that one as well. This is amazing, my friend. Hope you are well. 💗💗💗

  9. My goal is to ‘age’ disgracefully respectable! I have decided to discard the shackles of what is deemed fit and proper for an older person. Finally, I have grown into myself and am comfortable in my own being 🙂

  12. This is so magnificent, Candice. ❤

    "Crossing her face like stars

    More beautiful for their dance

    On skin long past its prime and so fine

    For a constellation is music over time

    Then and only then, love breathes eternal"

    I love that!!

  14. Candice, nicely done. Like many, I marvel at the lengthy marriage of Barbara and George Bush. She was a sincere soul and had a life well lived, cutting up until the very end. Keith

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