When I Am Young Again

The prompt from Sunday Scribblings was Wild Mind

My back feels a lot better today. I guess I had a not-too-serious strain on muscle or bone. None-the-less I’m feeling far from perky or cheerful. I’m reminded of my age, which most of the time seems more imaginary than real. “How can I possibly be 86 years old?” I tend to think. “Why that would make me an old woman!”

And here is the foolish daydream into which my wild mind frequently has taken flight. I half believed that it was possible, maybe after I had lost a few pounds, took a few more courses - well, you get the idea – to achieve the turning back of time, to be what I once had been. But this dream also included things I might have done and would now never be able to do. And this is the poem that I wrote several years ago, expressing the dreams of a mind set free:

WHEN I
AM YOUNG AGAIN

when I am young again.When I am young again
I’ll toss this cane above my
Lead the parade
with spirited high-stepping prance
I’ll wear a flirty skirt
to swish and swirl
as I twirl and dance -
when I am young again

I will fly condor high
beneath translucent whispering wings
of nylon (yellow, I think, or pink)
my strong non-aching muscles braced
against the cross-bar; I’ll look down
on small foreshortened trees,
fields and houses, people, cows.
I’ll share an updraft with a circlling hawk,
above us endless sky -
when I am young again.

These bent hands will flow once more
with ease across the ivory keys,
memories in my finger tips
of Paderewski’s minuet,
Mozart’s Sonata in C Major,
evoking warm breeze through open windows
and scent of new-mown grass -
when I am young again.

I will learn Balinese and walk
barefoot on a beach, swim free
with parrot fish and manta ray
through corals of the barrier reef.
I will wear
hibiscus flowers in my hair -
when I am young again...