Welcome to Sunday Morning Lyricality, featuring a weekly song or poem by a Minnesota writer. Our current guest editor is Judith Feenstra.
This month’s offerings will carry the theme of aging. Perhaps more than any other month, we are reminded in October that time marches on. The shortened days, the falling leaves, the barren fields all lend to the sense of inevitable closure.
Judith Feenstra
There are worlds of difference in the aging process, dependent on forces that shape our individual lives. Among the many variables, an individual’s personal attributes play a significant role in how we adjust to changes.
This brief poem reflects an attitude of actively confronting age as opposed to passively accepting the disadvantages of growing old. Bernie’s poem, filled with imagery, invites the reader to give thought to their own approach to late-life stages.
Autumn Leaves Ablaze
Bernadine Lortis
My world is on fire
gladly I walk into it
with desire to be set aflame
covet the warmth like a miser
store and burn it bit by bit
through the frozen winters
of my receding storehouse.
***
Along with reading, gardening, and dabbling in watercolor, Bernadine Lortis (Bernie) has been writing secretly and sporadically for years. She began submitting in 2016 when family responsibilities lessened and freed her to commit to writing seriously; since then, fiction, creative nonfiction and over 25 poems have been published in online journals and print anthologies.
“Autumn Leaves Me Ablaze” by Bernadine Lortis appears with permission of the poet.