Photograph by Erica Smith.  http://thebitties.squarespace.com/

My best friend convinced me to participate in a project combining my poems with her photographs.  She sent me this rose and I had to write a paragraph about it.

Aging gracefully is overrated –

probably perported

by the stoic who know no other way.

Can’t a compromise be reached

between classy and ridiculous?

Let me wear sandals in winter

and white in the fall if I

have the notion.

I’ll refrain from telling you your business

if you forgive my lapses of social etiquette.

Let me grow round and happy,

be silly in love like a school girl,

and I’ll still sip tea on Sunday afternoons

as expected.

I happen to enjoy tea

anytime

anywhere

for any reason.

But you can think it is because

I am being proper

if that makes you happy.

And we can both be content

in the end because we

lived lives full of what

we deemed valuable.

All of our loveliness will shrivel,

but the fragrance of our souls

will linger in the smiles of our

children and grandchildren

and the stories they tell of us.

I want my story memories

to be adventures

full of laughter,

not faded photographs

posed with ankles crossed,

pearls placed just so.

-Rebekah J. Marshall