Dinah, our President, intended to read a poem at our July meeting, but there was no time.  I agreed to add it to the previous meeting report … and, of course, I forgot!

So … here is what we missed – a lovely poem, which I find very peaceful and pleasant, perhaps because I am a lady of a certain age ….

Kate Claisse

 

Sea Glass

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want
the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me
feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years
pass — made not weak, but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with
the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks
and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do
what is next. Not stuck — just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels
like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry
me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and
carried along — just for the connection, just for the sake of
appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities
of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman
I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my
exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my
well-earned patina, neither flashy nor dull, just the right lustre. And
they’ll wonder if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and
how I got to be in this very here and now.

And we’ll both feel lucky to realise, once again, that we have landed
in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.
I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my
preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of
them.

Bernadette Noll