Septuagenarian Love
Waking to your touch
electric eels
massive
healing hands
without a glint
of sexuality
Waking to your smile
whispers sweetly
to my soul
like the first time
so long ago
on our first flight
together
when your arm
brushed against mine
and shook our worlds
out of their solitary
orbits and
sent us to the moon.
Your grey fluffy hair
sparkling silver threads
entices every time
I sniff your fragrance
and inhale the heavens
the warmth
of your cheeks
in our fleeting
embrace
I would it
would last forever
like our love
The smile lines etched
around your sky blues
alter the pulse
the course of my blood
and with each glance
reach for the stars
twinkling inside my head
The wrinkles in your cheeks
and your furrowed brow
pluck at the strings
inside my bosom
for I know the hard times
and worries that
engraved them on your face
On the doorway
to Orpheus
in pillowed embrace
your big hand
holds mine
and makes me
feel safe and loved
and little
as you drift off
leaving me wishing
for morning
to awaken once
more to you
fears tears
so long to wait
till morning
We are old
How did this happen?
and we are in love
more than ever
youthful passion gone
replaced by years of fidelity
affection, quarrels, laughing,
teasing, crying
always sharing, caring
yet attraction still stirs
and the years of together
have sewn our souls to one
Loss is inevitable
and unacceptable
In equal measure
The God I used to find
in nature
I now find in you
And the ecstasis
of gazing at the sky
now rests with the mystery
of you!!
Happy Birthday to the love of my lifetimes!! May your 70’s be healthy and happy and filled with ever blossoming love💖🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏💖
MOONSIDE 
Amen! Happy birthday! Beautiful poem of love and dedication! May you both have health, bliss and moments of happiness and positive thinking always! Best regards.
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October 10, 2022 at 3:41 AM
Thanks so much, Kalantzianastasia!! I really appreciate YOUR appreciation of the poem and your good wishes. Also I appreciate your “likes” of several of my posts. Unfortunately, I have not been able to blog for awhile because on his birthday my husband had to have emergency oral surgery. I am taking care of him but am too nervous to read or write much. I have one post I scheduled ahead of time for Wednesday, I think but nothing for awhile. Eventually I hope to be calm enough to read your blog but your posts are quite lengthy and I just don’t have the concentration I used to have. I have also lost concentration to write poetry. This poem is a revived poem I changed a bit for his 70th birthday. So many, many thanks!!
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October 10, 2022 at 12:30 PM
Oh, dear friend and co-blogger, I am so thanking you for this letter which is quite close to our marital situation as well! This is almost like you’re describing our own health situation, especially my husband’s who’s having a chemo with some great deal of success after his prostate’s cure with the proper medicaments during the last 10 months, thus, I empathize you more than you could ever know. Yes I know. my articles are a little bit long, but I reblog them from one of my good friends who’s a linguist and an excellent translator in Brussels many years now, but never mind at all if you don’t have the time to read them, because there’re many times I do the same too! I am a freelance translator with nine grandkids too and I also don’t have so much free time anymore and also have many issues with my knee and neck with lots of physiotherapies! The main thing is you’re an excellent poet and writer and admired by me very much! Take always good care of yourselves and be happy and don’t ever forget to smile whatever the problems might be, this is my principle too. My wishes for health are primordial towards you, and thank you very much for your kind words. May your love be eternal and you both healthy as the towering mountains! All the very best and a nice and peaceful wintertime to both of you!
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October 10, 2022 at 1:01 PM
Thank you so VERY much for this, my dear blogging friend!!! It means so much!! But anyone can write poetry but not everyone can be such an amazing person as YOU are!!! I wrote you a long comment and they deleted it. I can not write well now. I would not be blogging at all in your place because I have an anxiety disorder and Bipolar disorder and it makes anything medical with my husband a huge thing. I can’t write more now but I want to send back to you your own so eloquent and empathetic words….
“Take always good care of yourselves and be happy and don’t ever forget to smile whatever the problems might be, this is my principle too. My wishes for health are primordial towards you, and thank you very much for your kind words. May your love be eternal and you both healthy as the towering mountains! All the very best and a nice and peaceful wintertime to both of you!”
Sending healing love and prayers… let me know your first name.
💖💖💖🙏🙏🙏❗❗❗
ellen
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October 10, 2022 at 2:56 PM
My dearest friend Ellen, I am Anastasia, which means resurrection in Greek, enormously glad and happy to have met you even here. It’s pure luck my dear, but we shouldn’t be so extroverted and outgoing like me and you, cuz most people are mean, evil, gossipers and jealous; they aren’t all like me and you, or like these few people among us. Thank you wholeheartedly for your friendship, sentiments of affection, tenderness which show how identical we’re and don’t get surprised by my warm and humane attitute, cuz this is simply how I am, me, my children [militaries] and my nine grandkids, but not towards anyone, only to those people who deserve it like you, even though after coronovirus all earth’s people need communication, love, standing, helping hand, support, affection and most of all love. I don’t know but my behavior is natural to me cuz this is the normal way I’ve grown up, as my kids and grandkids too: to give and take love, first to give and after to take. An umpteenth number of trials and tribulations in life me too, my dear, illnessses, surgeries, bullying in childhood, accidents, but I’ve overcame with parents, friends and love, much of love around me and the same wish to you too with all my heart. My days off are over now, so get back to freelance translation work again, how nice to e-meet you, dear Ellen and please, do take care of yourself and your loving husband cuz at the end of the day this is the only thing that we have and matters, ourselves and our loving and beloved compagnons! All my love to you, true and genuine friendship and admirator of your poetic verses. Anastasia. French teacher, Fr-En freelance translator, En-Fr Amazon published writer. All my warmest greetings.:-):-):-)
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October 11, 2022 at 2:26 AM
Dear Anastasia,
What a beautiful name and meaning!! It suits you. I am enormously glad to have met you, too, dear. Are you in Greece? I am in New York City but my motherâs side came from Sicily. My grandfather, whom I was enormously close to came from Sicily when he was 16 and I was sent to live with my Sicilian grandparents many times because my poor mother had two children, almost twins, and was too busy taking care of them. But it was my blessing because I adored my grandfather (even though he did some mildly sexual things with me). His love saved me. My parents were 19 and 20 when they got married and not very educated.
You sound like you came from a more educated background⦠am I wrong?
So it sounds like you overcame a lot growing up. Me, too. Alcoholism in my brother, father and American grandfather. Plus as I say, I am Bipolar, Anxiety ridden and have Aspergerâs as does my beloved husband. That is how we understood each other. We both got help and spent all our lives struggling to fight not only bullies but the demons in our heads. My husband wound up being a social worker for the poor mentally ill in New York City. I was a librarian but had to go on disablility at age 50 or so. And then we bought a little barn in the country which we went to on weekends and all poetry and newspaper articles and painting and photography came out of my studio there. Nature inspired me and I felt God in nature. Alas, we got old (I think I am much older than you are) and we couldnât afford the house anymore so retired in New York City. We have no children because we were struggling too much with psychological problems and because of all the mental illness in both our families. Nine grandchildren!!! I cannot believe it. You must be surrounded by love. I can imagine they all love you and you, them!! You are a very giving person.
You sound like you had your share of troubles, too, but I think you are a much stronger person than I am psychologically speaking. I am almost 73, look older, and I walk around very feebly because for the last year or so with the pandemic we didnât go out hardly at all. My husband has a lung problem and it was too risky but he is not careful enough. You also seem to have a positive attitude. Mine is just the opposite. I am so scared of losing my dearest.
You are translating freelance now that your kids have grown up. Tell me more about what you do. You translate French? My best friend who died of breast cancer at age 39 lived in Paris and I visited her there. We loved each other like sisters. I have a real sister but she is cut off from the family and a dangerous person and my brother, whom I was close to, died in his 50s of lung cancer. He was an alcoholic. He married twice and adopted three abused children. One came out okay. Your children are in the military?
I suppose you do not have much time to post or write with your family and husband and grandchildren and translating job but I hope we stay in touch. Though I no longer write poetry I can repost old poems that are better than anything I can write now. How I wish we could sit down and have a coffee and talk endlessly about life.
First off, I am sure you are taking good care of your husband. I will pray for you and him. I am glad he has an optimistic prognosis. It must have been very hard to go through all you went through with him, with chemotherapy and all. Both my parents died of cancer in their 60s. I donât know how I am alive. I am not an optimist the way you seem to be and GOOD for you!!! I wish I was not so fearful, etc. It is the mental illness.
Well maybe someday you can post online your own work if you ever get time. Yes, the most important thing are our loved ones and above all our beloved husbands.
Thank you for reaching out to me. It is through your responses that I got to know you a little and hopefully we can get to know each other a little more. Feel free to tell me about yourself. Yes, surgeries and all. I will try to be as accommodating to you as you have been to me. Thank you for reaching out. I hope WordPress doesnât erase this message!!! I will send it now before it is lost in the ether.
Take care, dear Anastasia, of yourself and your husband. I pray all will be well.
ellen
Sent from Mail for Windows
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October 11, 2022 at 5:08 AM
Dearest Ellen, I am so glad you wrote to me and you opened your good heart and mind and I really feel you very close to me, even now I am quite tired from all day running in doctors, physiotherapy exams and the like for both of us, I am 60 but looking like a teen and ride also a bike and gym and all this cuz my grandkids on the one hand give me all the strength and love I need but on the on the other hand it’s the gene itself, my dear Ellen that functions inside me because of my father, a rebel revolutionary in the WWII and metalled. My both parents were working hard, engineer my father and electrician with his own factory and a pension where we live here in Volos near the sea with my son and his family, and my mom waver and hooker, both gone many years now but at 81 and 84. I had my mother in bed and taking care of her for 13 years and this is the reason I tought french in primary and high school only for 3 years cuz of her taking care all day, but translations and writing saved me until now. I’ve written 65 Amazon published books in French and English and I am translating for many foreign agencies in all over the world, thank God, there’s a lot of work in this translation industry. The bad thing is that I lost my only brother too, his name was Euripides, a very handsome man, engineer too in our factory, but he’s gone from stomach cancer like my dad. Well, dear Ellen, this is not the proper time or place to talk about our lives, and especially mine feel inside me as if I lived almost seven lives one after the other. My life is the only book I can start yet cuz I don’t really know where from exactly should I start it! It’s been, and it’s still is, an Odyssey! Maybe one day I’ll manage to come in N.Y. City and find you healthy and still happy with your loving husband and take our coffee and talk endlessley about anything your heart wants! I know this is diffuclt for you, I don’t know why, but I do have since my childhood this empathizing feature in me and have the competence to be in other people’s shoes right at the same moment I see them into their eyes or even through a poem, a letter or even a sentence! I read a lot psychology in the University, I love psychology and I’ve always wanted to be a psychiatrist, you know, and in the army especially, but my dad was very overprotective over me due to his big love to his kids and his family. They were both lovely people and tought us all to love and to give without fear and prejudice towards other people; he was a humanist like Aris Velouchiotis or Che Guevara, our standards in life! Well, I have to leave you now for the moment, work is waiting for me and hope we talk soon again. Take very good care of yourselves, both of you, cuz life is the only precious thing we have and we need to love it before we lose it. Life is so precious, like the sun, like birds, like all animals of this poor planet Earth, like all the children who hope and struggle for a better future! Don’t ever give up hoping for a better life, Ellen, never give up fighting! Take a good book and read, help your own mind to work hard! This is the only way to keep your mind sane and health, believe me! Good book and reading save me once from suicides after my divorce from my 1st marriage, because I studied along with my kids, having my kids along with me when studying and working at the same time in Thessaloniki city…. My life does not have a comma, it’s endless as you may understand… All the best, dear friend and love yourself very much! This is the big life’s secret: loving yourself to be able to love anyone else. Anastasia.
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October 11, 2022 at 6:42 AM
65 books!!! And caretaking for so many years!! You are a wonder!
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October 11, 2022 at 2:26 PM
Good morning, dear Ellen and thank you very much for your kind words. Days off work are gone 3 days now and the projects fortunately are running, thanks God! As for the Amazon books I’ve started to write, because I am writting all sorts of things since my childhood, 4 years ago, this is not too much as you think so because I happen to be one of the very last gears into the whole writing competition of authors from all over the world, and I’ll be quite late to reach the proper time for a best seller book! They’re millions of best selling writers but not me yet. As for my mama, I just did what every descent and loving daughter would do in my position, just because our mother is one and there’s no other else like our mother, especially if that mother had already lost 13 children before us [that is, my brother and me!]! Anyway, she is released from her tribulations and pains due to reumato-arthritis since 2013 and God helped her to rest her poor bones and arthroses, but it was her fault because she hasn’t been going to see the doctor the proper time and she was just putting…poultice onto the pain spot in her back for years and wasn’t listening to us.. Well, I hope you’re well and your dear husband too. Take good care of yourself, my thaughts are with you even my crazy busy days now. All the best deep down my heart. Anastasia.
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October 12, 2022 at 5:24 AM
All the very best to you, Anastasia!! May God bless you in all your responsibilities, endeavors, duties and everything else! I hope I can take care of my husband as you cared for yours and your mother. I did take care of my mother but with my husband’s BIG help. Take care, ❣️ ellen
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October 13, 2022 at 9:35 AM
Thank you very much Ellen, it’s very kind of you, your words give me much more strength cuz nothing is easy or fallen from the sky. We’re struggling for everything good as everyone else with dignity and pride, wisdom and thinking always of the other people’s needs too. May God give you also all the strength you’ll need to do whatever it takes for youself and your beloved husband. You’re not alone, you have each other and this is everything. All my love and thoughts to you and to your dear. Anastasia. 🙂 😉 😉
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October 13, 2022 at 9:46 AM
Great Love Story!
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October 11, 2022 at 1:22 PM
Thank you so much, Alexander!! God blessed us but the hardest part is ahead of us… hope we can care for each other no matter what happens. Caretaking is very hard. Anyhow, sorry to be so morbid. Thank you!!!
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October 11, 2022 at 2:05 PM
Unfortunately, all of us sooner or later will pass this way. Hopefully, Love will ease all future hardships.❤️🌹
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October 11, 2022 at 2:46 PM
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽❣️
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October 11, 2022 at 2:47 PM
Touching sentiments beautifully expressed! Wishing you many more happy birthdays together! ❤
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October 16, 2022 at 4:07 PM
Thank you, Cheryl, but this 70th one was a bust. He had to have emergency oral tooth surgery. And it’s not over yet. But thank you!!!
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October 16, 2022 at 6:41 PM
All the best! Hope he recovers soon. ❤
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October 17, 2022 at 1:19 PM
Thank you!! Me, too. Tell me, as a Sicilian American, do you find the women to be more anxious and emotional than your average American woman? The women in my family certainly were and I am but there could be other reasons for that. Just curious
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October 17, 2022 at 2:20 PM
Lovely autumn photos, Ellen! I love the vivid colors. 🙂
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October 16, 2022 at 4:09 PM
Yes, Fall was beautiful upstate where we used to have a barn house. Pretty in NYC, too, though not yet. Thank you!!
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October 16, 2022 at 6:42 PM
Absolutely beautiful.
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November 7, 2022 at 4:41 PM
Thank you so much❣️Means a lot coming from you❣️
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November 7, 2022 at 7:58 PM