Not Quite Thanksgiving

And suddenly you are out of magic elixer
and you feel your age and it’s really not so bad
for all the things that don’t work well any more,
there is still love and passion and curiosity
and a chance now and again to live all three,
putzing through memories and museums,
holding hands, examining the medicine cabinets
of my elders in wonder of single silver bullets
that cured all things, at least until
the huckster’s wagon moved to the next town,
more like today than you’d like to admit,
so full of artificial miracles that we miss the real ones.
No, age has its joys, memory is like a shield,
a reminder of things survived,
of a toughness you do not show,
it gives you a reason to dance each passionate moment
and simply not care what others think
of you and your medicine or the lack of it, or
the knowledge that you and God have something in common:
We are enough.

About this poem

Brushing off the past week with a poem

The picture of the box of elixer was taken at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, MA.

Tom