Old Folks

An ode and a note submitted for GiaB prompt #2–2: time

Her hands meant something different yesterday, but she can’t remember what.

Her hands are blistered, the skin covering them just slightly thinner than the skin on her face.

And even as she works through the moist earth, through the tenderness of the mulch — and through the stench of it — the little bubbles on her palms shift back and forth on the spade, and she can’t begin to recall what her hands must have done before to gather such anger against themselves.

The weeds are tight and resistant — the outer peelings begin to shatter — But the sinews of her muscles are thicker.

And her limbs stretch and moan, tired from yesterday.

But she has always defeated the scavengers. The ones that never learn.

The ones that defeat centuries, because they survive by eating the fragile fruit that is borne from years of patience…

But her skin.

Her bones.

Her memory —

aches not and cries not from the war she wages against the suckling blooms, feeding on the earth’s patient warriors.

Rather, she feels weakened,

from something that her skin —

Her bones

Her memory

Her hands —

Must have done yesterday.

~Written by Chloe P. Hawes

An older poem, itself, I wrote the above ode a few years ago when I was on the cusp of realizing my suppressed passion for writing poetry. At the time, I was adjusting both to the idea of adulting and to the reality of my parents growing older. And let’s be real: I’m still adjusting to independent adulthood and I’m continuously learning to deal with the fact that my mother and father are aging — just as I am, but into a very different phase of life.

An “ode” is a poetic attribution to anyone or anything a writer wishes to convey gratitude or respect. Well, that’s my definition.

Dictionary.com defines an ode as, “a lyric poem typically of elaborate or irregular metrical form and expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion.” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ode

After I joined Medium, I held on to Old Folks, finding myself unable to find the poem a proper home. I had recently transferred Old Folks to my drafts on Medium, but it wasn’t until today that I took this piece through my editing process, intent on submitting Old Folks to another publication, separate from Genius in a Bottle (“GiaB”). The other publication I refer to is, of course, a wonderful publication, but I was squeezing the square block that is Old Folks into a circular hole; my poem didn’t quite fit with the other publication. As it turns out, my timing, at least, was bizarrely apt.

I had completed adding the proper tags to Old Folks, polishing the poem until it was a click (or two clicks, technically) away from submission, when I decided to momentarily step away from my work. I went outside, opened my bible, and — being the distraction-prone individual that I am — promptly opened my phone. I found myself reading the second prompt in Genius in a Bottle’s second series of prompts. Honestly, I wasn’t even consciously aware of the story I was clicking on at the time (I thought Victor Sarkin, an editor at GiaB, had published a stand-alone poem). To my surprise, the right home for my ode had found me, and just in the nick of time.

This happenstance was a coincidence I couldn’t ignore, and I realized the moment I spontaneously decided to step away from my draft had been a pivotal point in time for the metaphorical life of Old Folks. And isn’t it funny, how seemingly inconsequential, small dots in time can alter as little as a poem’s destination, or, theoretically, as much as the preservation of 6 billion lives?

The current GiaB prompt is on the subject of time. We are all subject to that ethereal concept called time, as much as we might try to escape its tyrannical rule over our lives. Time connects, and ultimately disconnects, us all, and we always crave more. So, if you took the time to read this — thank you!

Please join in on GiaB’s challenge, and submit a piece before 9:00 a.m. on September 15th, 2021! Your story can take the form of a poem, nonfiction, or fiction, in adherence with the prompt’s few requirements. I’d like to specifically invite jenine bsharah baines, James G Brennan, Grey Hen With A Pen, David Rudder, Connie Song, William J Spirdione, Penofgold, K. Barrett, Indubala Kachhawa, and kurt gasbarra. The prompt can be found by clicking the following link (or by clicking the word “prompt”):

I would love to read a piece on time from unique perspectives, so I hope as many people who read this (and more) will participate. Please be aware that if you want your piece considered in the challenge, you must submit your story to Genius in a Bottle. My deepest gratitude, as always, to the editors of GiaB.

~Written by Chloe P. Hawes (the author’s Medium handle is now @chloehawes).