Midlife Poetry

Here are some of our favorite poems that address the midlife situation. Please e-mail us if you have others you'd like to suggest!

After Long Silence

The Layers

Touch Me

The Waking

Love Song

True Love

Let Evening Come

A Marriage

As Difference Blends...

In a Dark Time

...I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

...We shall not cease from exploration

From a Norman Crucifix of 1632

After Long Silence

W.B. Yeats

Speech after long silence; it is right, 
All other lovers being estranged or dead, 
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant.

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The Layers

Stanley Kunitz

......

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

Toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

in my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

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Touch Me

Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.

Words plucked out of the air

some forty years ago

when I was wild with love

and torn almost in two

scatter like leaves this night

of whistling wind and rain.

It is my heart that’s late,

it is my song that’s flown

Outdoors all afternoon

under a gunmetal sky

staking my garden down.

I kneeled to the crickets trilling

underfoot as if about

to burst from their crusty shells;

and like a child again

marveled to hear so clear

and brave a music pour

from such a small machine.

What makes the engine go?

Desire, desire, desire.

stirs the buried life.

one season only,

and it’s done.

So let the battered old willow

thrash against the windowpanes

and the house timbers creak.

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

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The Waking

Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

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Love Song

Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square: 
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
and other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing 
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls 
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got 
hung up in it myself.
I Danced with a purple thumb 
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage as nails 
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then 
it screamed and went on through, 
skewing as wrong the other way. 
God damned it. This is hell, 
but I planed it, I sawed it, 
I nailed it and I 
will live in it until it kills me. 
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece 

but I can't do everything myself. 
I need a hand to nail the right, 
a help, a love, a you, a wife. 

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True Love

David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this 
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides
I remember an old man 
who walked every morning
on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals,

who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer 
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water, 

and I think of the story 
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them,

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking
and that calling,
and that moment we have to say yes,
except it will 
not come so grandly,
so Biblically,
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love,

so that when 
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted 
to drown you could,
but you don t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you don t want to any more,
you ve simply had enough
of drowning,
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness,
however fluid and however
dangerous, to take the 
one hand you know
belongs in yours. 

from A Norman Crucifix of 1632

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away,
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain you will not obey.

I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay,
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.

I am your counsel, but you do not hear me,
I am the lover whom you will betray,
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.

I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

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