Aging

Poem 675 – Turning

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And just like that the shorts have gone away,
the evening dimmed a little earlier.
Dandelions no longer cheer the lawn
now thoughts have turned to autumn.

The summer has been carefully folded up,
and stored in crates of happy memory.
Its carefree days of sun and play will now
only be opened from time to teasing time.

And in the mirror in the store I caught
a passing glimpse of changing seasons,
a hint of what has been, is now, and is
still yet to be, thus turning thoughts to autumn.

The seasons are turning as the schools begin to return.
(01.09.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Matt on Unsplash

Poem 596 – p=mv

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Sir Isaac Newton said momentum equals
an object’s mass times its velocity.
But where is time in that? Experience says
that time can have momentum, that driving force
that urges onwards, ever resolute.
Yesterday’s year becomes tomorrow’s week,
eighteen years a day, with time opposing
speed, becoming faster as I get slower.

We said farewell to a local minister today. It feels as if she’s just arrived, and yet it’s been 18 years. How does that work?
(15.06.25)

© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Ahmad Ossayli on Unsplash

Poem 509 – Travelling Backwards

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Today I’m travelling backwards
Facing the wrong way around
Reversing to Cambridge by train

The present flees before me
Doppler effect in years
Returning to my home

Revisiting forgotten passions
Middle age flies by
Resurfacing our childhood

Trips to Cambridge always make me nostalgic. Aging does that too.
(08.05.25)

© Ben Quant 2025

Poem 33 – Our Voyage

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Our childhood heroes bid farewell,
departing to journey alone
Leaving us grasping in denial
snapshots of the view
These faded polaroid stills of seventies
sequins, flares and hair
Agnetha and Frida back to back,
Benny and Björn smiling on
Perfect harmonies as the crowd dance
to their Swedish lilt
From Waterloo to bittersweet
when all is said and done
Were we naively hoping the picture
would pick up where they left
Or did we believe them to be like us
as we deceive ourselves
Frozen in time when in truth all age
and those glamorous skinsuits
Might no longer look so good on
bodies that have travelled the years
Is the discovery anticlimactic that
they’re not Peter Pan
And whilst the voices clearly belong
something has definitely changed
But I for one will cheer as they
look back upon their voyage
Because the tide of time likewise
nibbles my being’s shore
I do not want to live regretting
its tender gradual erosion
But satisfied survey each step and
content embrace the view

Feeling a little wistful today having just listened to the new ABBA album, aware of both time passing and the richness that its passing can bring.

(12.11.21)

© Ben Quant 2021
Photo By Anders Hanser – http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/abba-the-museum/images/abba-the-museum-the-choir-250208, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44782676