theme thursday - wrinkle

artichoke heads, california

I have wrinkles. (I like to think of them as life's comments on my face and body.)
So, from wrinkles, I got to thinking about age.
And I thought of some of my favourite writings.


jumper by sonia rykiel at la musee des arts decoratifs, paris

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.
from When I am an Old Woman by Jenny Joseph



poster at the sonia rykiel exhibition

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
from Anthony & Cleopatra



ww2 graves, bayeux, france

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
from For the Fallen by L Binyon



churchyard, st mary in the marsh, kent

My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
from Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

oban, scotland