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The Old Year Passes 2007 or Grandpa Jim

 

At the January Hoot, Nancy Donovan read this strong and sharp poem:

 

Lumbering old man

Pushing your walker slowly into the night

This is not how you imagined the end would be

When you were vigorous and full of laughter.

 

Submerged anger covered with righteousness

Encouraged you on this path to self-destruction.

Now, it’s not with a bang

But piecemeal

Chunks of what was you

Loosening then falling irretrievably to the abyss.

 

What thoughts are still ruminating in those dark corridors.

What memories, what emotions are evoked

When the boy comes to embrace you,

And you fold your arms around his thin strong body.

He will carry pieces of you to the future

Pass on only the best of you to him.

                   – Nancy Donovan

If we are honest, our feelings toward family members are not always full of sweetness, even when they are old and failing. Nancy’s fine poem contains regret and much anger, and its vehemence suggests that there are unexplained facts and events that support the narrator’s harsh judgment of “grandpa Jim.” We wonder about the details of the relationship between the “old man,” “the boy,” and narrator. Words like “self-destruction” and “dark corridors” remind us of the complexity of the human mind and how a life can veer into bad places. With the old passing away and a new year beginning, the poem ends on a positive wish for the young as they start their journey.

  – Harvey Shepard, (hshepard@gmail.com)