“At Midlife, I See That…” by Joan Vinall-Cox

At Midlife, I See That…

Courage at eighty is different from at twenty

But both ages carry their future constantly -

A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.

To carry your future at twenty is to seek

The wilderness because it must be mapped

And shaped. There are roads to clear and homes

To build, and no one has given you a plan

For your wilderness, (just the one they didn’t use in theirs).

So you thrust forward, knowing too little and enough,

Building blindly wherever you find a clearing, lifting

The log of your childhood so it bridges your fears,

Confident that it might not collapse on you.

A fearsome thrust carrying life forward blindly

At eighty requires enough love to endure

Despite loss, and endure because of loss to come,

And endure because of the sweetness still here, if

Courage persists. And, despite (because?) the compass pointing

Through the wilderness to the edge of the map,

Tells a tale seen over and over about endings, despite this,

To work through today knowing

too much, and not enough, about tomorrow.

Courage at eighty is different from at twenty

But both ages carry their future constantly -

A fearsome thrust into an unmapped wilderness.

Joan Vinall-Cox has loved poetry all her life, and even taught a poetry appreciation course for a few years. When she writes, sometimes it’s about her own experiences and sometimes she takes on a persona, imagining how others might see the world from their vantage points.

This summer, Joan took part in the Intensive Creative Writing course in Burlington. Three courses starting this fall still have space: Welcome to Creative Writing in Burlington on Tuesday afternoons (see here) and The Next Step in Creative Writing, offered on Thursday afternoons in Mississauga (see here) and on Thursday evenings in Georgetown (see here).

See Brian's full schedule here, including writing workshops and creative writing courses in Kingston, Peterborough, Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Georgetown, Milton, Oakville, Burlington, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Dundas, Kitchener, Guelph, London, Woodstock, Orangeville, Newmarket, Barrie, Gravenhurst, Sudbury, Muskoka, Peel, Halton, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.