Part One

Backlit

To backlight anything

Human or inanimate

Is to risk placing the object in shadow

What if…

Seeing life at an elderly age

Is not to create shadows

But to see the light behind the essence

Of yesterday

The past of living

What if the idea is

A safe way to appear for now

To know that the baggage of the past

Is there for a purpose

What if…

The back light of the past

Is brought over the head

Into a straight on illumination

What would we see?

Such a moment faces

Every aging man or woman

A consciousness often realized

 Only with their last breath of forgiveness

Part Two 

Arguably, we create our own reality. Yet, given the most obstinate challenge facing the aged in the mirror every day is rendered with disappointment and often depression, denial takes hold..  There is so much to admire in a face that shows experience with both smile and grimace lines of life still in progress.  (Image by Odin AI)

You

So
What do you do
You who rush to be somewhere
Knowing others clamor to jump ahead
To be there waiting to push you back

What do you do
You whose dreams remain tenuous
Without the courage to risk
Whose narrow window of time ticks backward
For fear of the future
Who needs what others wish to prevent
To stand upon your own weathered peak?

Genealogy is more than generational beginning and end.

Inclement passage need not be feared
For the route only you know
Traverses through your own created clouds
Revealing sunlight you also create
Above the storms no one else can own
Except you