Reaching Sixty

Three times twenty

Two times thirty

Four times fifteen

Five times twelve

Six times ten

One times sixty

Ten times six

Take your choice, you can pick and mix.

So many ways to reach sixty.

Every second tells that tale.

Every minute absorbs the same.

Such a perfectly round number

shaped by experience, loved through the years.

Shared by family amid occasional tears.

Suddenly it seems, an expectation grows.

Wisdom overnight accorded openly.

Grey hair fights to claim prominence

as it shakes off artificial colouring

Eyes narrow concentrating to focus.

Wrinkled, ever so slightly, on an unblemished skin.

A complimentary bus pass drops through the letter-box.

An unnecessary reluctance to show it on view.

"What me, like the elderly? No, that can't be right."

She still enjoys the occasional late night, retiring to bed

as light seeps in through the curtains.

Reaching sixty, she enters the serious years.

Her views are formed, her convictions sincere.

She dresses to confirm these views, in the town, and in the city.

But at the beach, the bikini defies her advancing years.

Damn it, why not? Yes, a monokini!

She'll wear hers this year with pride.

Internal movement hinders the sprint.

The Achilles strains to warn, 'not so fast'.

Sitting too long in one position abnormal

See the children fidget, they can't sit still.

Yet moments of stillness are friends to her.

She reflects on her life and its manifest value being

part of the local and larger community.

A writer, a poet, an artist of distinction.

The indelible print, representation beyond life

As only an artist can create.

But didn't they tell you?

Your best works are still to appear.

Life will re-generate through grandchildren and your poetry will be taken to new pastures to observe, to record, and to question:

What is at the heart of the matter ?

And what it is,  is uncertainty.

That uncertainty is how it always has been

and always will be, no doubt.

Yet that is why we celebrate Hannie's sixtieth year.

It is her crucial milestone declaring out loud,

"I am alive to the future."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNIE ROUWELER