The Romance of Middle Age by Mary Meriam

I thought I’d check out Ted Kooser’s site American Life in Poetry this morning in search of a poem to post today at Blue Rose Girls. I didn’t have to spend much time looking for a poem. I loved the first poem I read--Mary Meriam’s The Romance of Middle Age, which is the site's “current column.”

In Kooser’s introduction to the poem, he writes:
Rhyming has a way of brightening a poem, and a depressing subject can become quite a bit lighter with well-chosen rhymes. Here’s a sonnet by Mary Meriam, who lives in Missouri. Are there readers among you who have felt like this?

The Romance of Middle Age
by Mary Meriam

Now that I’m fifty, let me take my showers
at night, no light, eyes closed. And let me swim
in cover-ups. My skin’s tattooed with hours
and days and decades, head to foot, and slim
is just a faded photograph. It’s strange
how people look away who once would look.
I didn’t know I’d undergo this change
and be the unseen cover of a book
whose plot, though swift, just keeps on getting thicker.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

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At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original list poem titled Things to Do If You Are a Castle.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is at Live. Love. Explore!