Dave Brown plumbs the thoughts of “a certain age.”
I can’t recall when it began, but some years back, I discovered myself thinking of things that hadn’t been even a small blip on my radar when I was younger. I know it started before I retired. One morning, I woke up, fixed my breakfast, and started reading the obituary page in the newspaper. Regularly. Like, every day. I wouldn’t read each entry, but I’d scan the names, looking for people I might now or had heard of.
Eventually I started finding names I knew. People I had worked with. Former executives I’d written speeches for. People I knew from church. It was unsettling. I remember my mother, who for as long as I could remember had faithfully attended her annual high school class reunion. She finally stopped, explaining quietly that only three people were left.
As you move into old age, you receive regular reminders of your own mortality, and not only from newspaper obituaries. As poet Dave Brown has discovered and written in I Don’t Usually, But, things that were never paid much attention to before take on meaning. For me, it’s art, family history, and a few other subjects. For Brown, it’s watching birds. And turtles being hatched on the beach. Memories of a grandmother and childhood. The things he would have liked to tell his mother. Watching the early morning light coming through the window. The importance of listening. Walking in a wildlife preserve.
Brown has also had the experience of opening the newspaper and discovering the passing of another friend.
Thanksgiving
It seems to happen a lot these days,
I wake up and read that another
fellow traveler has left this world.
It comes with being a certain age, I guess.
You would think I’d get used to it
but I never do, I never do.
Parting is not a sweet sorrow.
The sweetness of memory sustains
but never erases the pain.
The phone calls stop:
you miss his guitar, the B-3 is quiet,
her bass no longer finds a groove.
We say goodbye again and again, never to be the same.
Grateful, yes, thankful, to be sure,
Yet the weight of grief remains.
It happens more often these days
to those of us of a certain age.
We say goodbye, and tears fall.
We wipe our eyes,
remember in silence
and are thankful
that when the sun
rises in the morning
we get to see it.
Dave Brown
I Don’t Usually But is a collection of poems, but Brown also includes a few reflections and some startingly beautiful photographs (one of which appears on the cover). He writes in a straightforward, narrative style; these poems are easily accessible and easy to read. And connect with.
Brown is a writer, pastor, and musician, and he served as the pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, Washington. He studied at both Whitworth University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s a founder of Blues Vespers, which has brought blues, poetry and reflection to Tacoma for almost three decades.
As the poems demonstrate, Brown’s focus on the thoughts of being “a certain age” are about gratitude and thankfulness. No one can stop the clock; resistance is futile, so we might as well enjoy it and experience the wonder..
Photo by Shaun Derry, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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Katie Spivey Brewster says
Appreciate your closing paragraph in particular, Glynn. Thank you for introducing us to another valuable poet.