Women at forty

Carole Glasser Langille
From:   In Cannon Cave. Brick Books, 1997.

The days are theirs to move through
where all motion smoulders.
Clothes slip off them
and colours fill the lakes of their bodies.
Sun dissolves in hair.
No matter what they carry
the world holds them in its grip
simply because, they have a way to loosen love.

They way they open a blouse, for example,
or open doors, certain, in some room
of some wonderful adventure.
They believe in their bodies,
believe love can deepen,
houses will be cheaper,
on each walk they are growing younger,
in each new house the foundation will be stronger.

Behind them, a world that moves
too slow.    They no longer seek
what they do not want, or flaunt
what they begin, or search for those
who do not need them.    They know what,
besides time, haunts sleep,
what is moving away
and what keeps coming closer.

Women at forty are the end of summer,
lakes swollen with warm water,
eel grass.    They border fall
where they will have to say goodbye
to long evenings.    Now, at the height of the year,
nights chill slightly, nights filled
with summer skies - the Big Dipper,
the Pleiades, bodies blazing.

They still believe
they will not relive the past,
though some days,yelling at their children,
they know already they are their mothers,
with the old aches, the old affinities. They do not yet know
even old women search. That one day
the future will be dark and will swim behind them, unhanding them.
They will be cold in winter, cold in summer.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Carole Glasser Langille's works copyright © to the author.