A lovely poem on getting older: Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
Donald Justice Men at Forty
At times it is necessary to let go of the past as one moves on in life. Doing so, the ground may not feel so solid; it moves, as the poet says, "like the deck of a ship". However, that movement is gentle, partly because of the wisdom, experience and skills built up over the years. There is something beautiful about the use of the word "softly" at the end of the second line. Moving on can be done with full acceptance, with a face turned toward future adventures, with an understanding of the passing of time.
