Violation

Middle aged people
will wander around
battling inner tempests.
Wondering if the outer
could just wisp them away.

In the park, ghosts
fly high on the tyre swings.
All I want to do is push
these spirits away.
This is the place where I go;

Back and forth
Back and forth

It's the roundabout
which I so want to ride on.
It's covered in autumn leaves
and I laugh alone
as the trees rustle around me.

Aging is where I can place
my hands on my body.
Feel my own shedding leaves
and discover the sensuality
of my decay.

See Saw Marjorie Daw
See Saw Marjorie Daw

There are times though where all
one does is sit at the bottom.
In the game one can't rise to the top
So there isn't any master.

Words get twisted in the stormy night
People spill like lattes onto the ground.
A cloud approaches
the lid is blown right off
and then lightening strikes.

I choked on a purple flower.
Somebody laughed
and said I had been violated.

Uses apt playground imagery to experience a "second childhood," not exactly senility but a kind of wistful nostalgia of an adult "teeter- tottering" on the edge of middle-age. One hopes that the playmate on the top doesn't suddenly jump off, making you crash to the ground with a thud. Very painful upon the area euphemistically described as "the business end."

Thanks Auntie. I hadn't thought about the second childhood aspect much. It's one of the beauties of poetry. The reader is often more the master than the writer!