‘Sort of Old’ and Other Poetry by Heidi Griminger Blanke

Sort of Old

I take my senior discount
at restaurants and stores.
I cover up my gray hairs
with Clairol reservoirs

My bathroom’s filled with potions
I slather on my face.
AHAs and Retinols
are things that I embrace.

No longer do I tuck in
my skirts and skinny jeans.
Instead I opt for loose fit
they don’t show in magazines.

Don’t think that I am that old,
cause I don’t do early bird.
To finish up at five o’clock
is outstandingly absurd.

Yet as the day draws to a close,
I’m first to get in bed.
My book is open on my lap
eyes closing, page unread.

Slo-mo

The alarm no longer rings at six
no teeth to brush or hair to fix
My dentures wait in plastic case
My hairbrush needs no warm embrace.

I rise as slowly as I want
a ninety-year-old debutante
It takes me hours just to dress
and for my brain to coalesce.

For breakfast soft foods are my friend
It’s better at the other end.
My friends have coffee, I have tea
Caffeine doesn’t agree with me.

I shuffle for my daily walk
My knees can feel the aftershock.
Agility is not quite so
Quarter speed is how I go.

But every day I greet the sun.
I’m up and out to have some fun.
Here’s looking at one hundred years
I plan to outlive all my peers.

Heidi Griminger Blanke won her first writing contest at age ten. She is now a freelance writer who writes regularly for area publications. Her romance novel, Redesigning Love, was published under the pen name Lisa Gabrielle and her essays and poetry have  appeared in a number of anthologies, most recently Oasis Journal 2017 and Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women. Blanke credits her success to Women Writers Ink, a western Wisconsin group promoting and supporting female writers. She lives with her husband in the beautiful Driftless Region.