Poem: “Becoming Sixty”

There was terror and anger

at coming into sixty.

Would I give birth 

only to my old age?

– 

Now near sixty-one 

I count the gifts that sixty gave.

– 

A book flowed from my life

to those who needed it

and love flowed back to me.

– 

In a yard that had seemed full,

space for another garden appeared.

I took my aloneness to Quaker meeting,

and my outstretched palms were filled.

– 

I walked further along the beach, 

swam longer in more sacred places,

danced the spiral dance,

reclaimed daisies for women

in my ritual for a precious friend

and received poet’s’ wine

from a new friend who came

in the evening of my need.

“Becoming Sixty” Copyright © by Ruth Harriet Jacobs. Reprinted with permission of the author.