Who do you think you are, old woman? A poem
Who do you think you are, old woman?
I am full of myself
I am too big for my boots
I have peaked too soon
I am a ballerina
semi-detached at the waist
I am a digger in moonlight
I am a sweet old lady
I am a scarlet woman
I am a crow of intensity
I am a daughter
I am a kettle of rainbow bits
that do not fit
I am a dunny of cobwebs
I am a subtle slump
that breaks your heart
I am nobody
I was somebody
I am a body
I am serene
I am struggling
I don’t want to open the door
These thoughts well up from within myself. And when I see an old person who is not known to me, I wonder if they also think such thoughts. Drawing and poem CC BY 2.0 Rachel McAlpine — if you like them, please share.
Wow! Powerful poetry! Powerful self-understanding. We are all more complex than we sometimes realize. Now I need to quiet down and search my old lady self…
Just one of many ways to see ourselves…
I rarely think of how I look to others. That is something to ponder.
That’s interesting. It might be unusual…
The title of this poem was at the top of my inbox when I opened my email. You gave me a start, then a laugh!!
It’s a fair question, right?
Amazing and powerful and feels so very true.
I am always pleased when a personal poem resonates with another person. It seems so unlikely that we can identify with a specific experience, but it happens with poems.
I particularly like the kettle refererence as I wrote a poem some time ago about an old kettle and always felt it was symbolic of myself … As I enter old age it is proving great fodder for poetry!