Looking in windows; Over the hill

Looking in windows

 

 

age ten in a car

pre-dawn darkness

a rectangle of warmth

a woman serving breakfast

a frying pan in her hand –

that could be my life

but it’s in the suburbs

 

age twenty on a trip

needing directions

walk up to the house

a glassed-in verandah

children’s art on easels –

that could be my life

but it’s treeless

 

age thirty in the mountains

a hiker’s hut

a red brick fireplace

bright rugs on bare floorboards

bunk-beds and backpacks –

that could be my life

but there is no garden

 

never the mansions

never the cities

never with neighbours

always rural

always remote

always welcoming

but never mine

 

a woman at night time

out in the garden

surrounded by trees

a rectangle of warmth

floorboards and fireplace

children’s art on the doors –

this is my life

seen through the window

 

 

 

Over the hill

 

you’ll know it when it happens

not by the twinges in joints

and the other pre-death complaints

but the change in viewpoint

 

hot lusty babe of yesteryear

barracking for your football team

buff blokes with tight butts

now you bellow, ‘Way to go, son…’

 

strident feminist who despised the fraud

and unfreedom of femininity

you will find yourself smiling fondly

at girls in the latest fashions

 

career women childless by choice

who turned down any chance to hold a baby

your churlish ‘No thank you, they leak’

becomes ‘Oh, what a sweetie!’

 

and all the young toughs with tattoos

teens with peculiar piercings

Goths and Emos with eyes like raccoons

kids blocking bus aisles with school bags

 

now they are all lambs, pretty lambs

cute as buttons

when you’ve survived your own youth

and matured into mutton