Little Lydia at one had a peach party dress and riotous blond curls
obligingly covered in pink and green icing.
With a most mischievous glint in blue gray eyes
and a delightful full tilt smile, she captivated her world.
Her pealing laugh brought her less than warranted reprieves
for frequent, ornery peccadilloes.
When Lydia was ten she wore oversized sweatshirts
to hide budding breasts and rolls of “baby” fat.
Pimpled and patently unattractive,
she was not overly fond of washing her hair or brushing her teeth.
She wrote poetry about wildflowers, woods fairies, melancholy mists,
and was painfully, woefully, wretchedly shy.
Twenty met Lydia slim, insouciant, and shamelessly Suma Cum Laude
in a spiky auburn shearing and shoulder duster earrings.
Bold and brazen, she sampled Chaucer, stagecraft,
marijuana and one of her professors.
Midnights were for conversing, dancing, laughing, love.
Mornings were for dashing off that day’s paper.
Lydia fell in love, forever, at thirty,
with a balding, homely man with smelly feet.
He taught her generosity, gentility, and to genuinely like herself.
She taught him that open chip bags don’t belong under the couch.
She took their baby for a walk around the block, one warm fall day,
coming home to find him curled around her pillow, cold, still, gone.
Forty found Lydia a job, house payments, jogging, knitting,
listing her life as Groceries, Things to do, Letters owed.
She braided her hair to tame it most days
and wore a semblance of shyness, a safety net of self-containment.
She met a grumpy soul, who led her spirit back.
She took his name and loved him proudly for the rest of her life.
Near the end of her fifties, Lydia lost her only son, suddenly,
as she had his father more than twenty years before.
She lost her soul mate too, that decade, on a slower, painful path
that coughed its way along to an inevitable, ugly end.
In those dark days, Lydia became seclusive, reclusive, eccentric, fey,
most often seen in baseball caps, baggy jeans, and gardening gloves.
Through her sixties, Lydia walked the woods.
She knew their busy awakenings, quiet noons, rustling twilights.
She mused and dreamed alone on the sun warmed moss.
By the watercress creek she found a haven from her pain.
In the roughness of the red oaks, in a stone bowled smooth, by water and time, she found her peace.
Somewhere in the middle of her chamomile teas, flower beds,
and seventy, her last great Love, found Lydia.
He wooed her lobelia, loosestrife, beach pea, and sedum,
courted her with cobbles of jasper and artifacts of argillite.
He swept her into sensuous languidity,
soothed by sparkling waters, as blue as the sky.
At eighty, “Miss” Lydia finally hired help to “keep her yard,”
the flowerbeds, remaining hers alone, and nearly sacrosanct.
Employing most of the neighbor kids at one time or another,
she gave them lunch, a little cash, hope, comfort, and support.
Many a troubled teen found their way amid her hummingbirds and bee balm.
Many a troubled parent gave thanks for a “Gone to Miss Lydia’s” note.
Lydia’s nineties begot a cane hand carved forty years past by her beloved.
A tree frog graced the top and curled one leg along the shaft.
Her great niece moved in with her music, junk food, college boards, and boys.
Later there was news of a wedding to plan in the yard.
One day Lydia held in her lap a great great niece
who viewed her namesake with trusting blue gray eyed solemnity.
At one hundred and three, Lydia had wispy white filaments of hair
and was known to cheat at High-ho Cherry-o, and chess.
She received company in rooms that viewed her flowerbeds,
and sent no-one away without a book, bouquet, or blessing.
One night she sent a kiss to all the treasured pictures on her bureau,
closed her eyes, and leapt up to go run barefoot in her woods.
Author notes
Written September 16th, 2004
What did you think
Comments
1 - 37 of 37
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Beautiful!!!!
This was such a beautiful write.. it brought me into the moments ... as she went through her life... Just a heartfelt, beautiful piece.. Thank you for sharing this!
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Great narrative, and excellent writing. Love it!
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EXCELLENT!!!1
It is beautiful,almost sad but I do not want to view it that way, because life teaches us many things and we shall always go through all these things. I am in love with the character.Lydia really came to life in this narrative,I think you did well. This is an exemplary piece.
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I do not cease to love this most beautiful narrative. And they said not much good would ever come out of Pennsylvania!LOL
John(not your brother) -
This made me cry ... it's absolutely beautiful; so sensitively written and well crafted. I don't have a favourite line - I love them all. Thank you for this ; it's made my day. xx
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Oh my goodness! This is just a charming and fanciful poem. You have really done a great job of taking each and every one of us along the road of life with Lydia. I know it is sad in some regard, but I am older than some on here (over 50) and I think with age, one gets to find this sort of sentiment more hopeful than sad. At least, I have found your poem to be that way. I see that you wrote this a long time ago - I have posted many of my pre-writes from 20 or more years ago, and I am always simply thrilled if someone reads one of them because they are my babies and I think they are worthwhile no matter how old they are. I think your poem is very worthwhile, and worth reading more than once as well. Very very good job on this one!
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great
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This is so beautiful! A captivating story. I found myself very hopeful through the sad parts, keeping reading just to make sure she found happiness again. Lovely, totally lovely! I wish I had more applause left because this is deserving!
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Most sincerely I praise you
One of the all-time best thought out and presented poems I have ever read. This should be in every school textbook and require an essay to be written about it. You are obviously a poet of great talent and a remarkably kind heart. I am privileged to be here at AP with you.
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That was absolutely beautiful. I loved it so much. I need to read your bio now. Lately, all I've seen is adolescent hormonal bloody stuff on this website and I know those have their place too but I can't tell you how refreshing this was. Thank you so much! I will read more of your works.
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This poem was very interesting. It revels the many stages of an individuals life in an unique perspective. Her life is filled with sorrow and love. Lydia, in a way, can symbolixr the lives of us all, in how we must endure certain unexpected hardships, experience lost and found love, and live life fully throughout all the changes we undergo until the day we die.
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Wow, that is absolutely stunning. I love the story, how it goes through her life and pulls out the good and the bad. I am nearly speechless, and that is a rare occurence. Very well done!
~Amanda -
i am almost speechless. miss lydia is someone i would have so enjoyed knowing. you wrote this very well. thank you for sharing your talent with me. viyanna r langager
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excellent
incredible. this piece travels through time and is rich in beautiful imagery :-) what a great piece! -
Well Done!
Such a piece capturing the reader with many picture perfect descriptions, I enjoyed this, and I appreciate the smile you put on my face this early morn!
Keep on penning on, this was great! 
Have a great day, all the best to you and poetry!
-Timothy The Poetic Weaver~~~~ -
Honest to God Masterpiece.
A very double wow to this piece, it is certainly a story within a fine piece of writing. I must bookmark this masterpiece to read and send to a dear friend. So my hat is off to you. This is truly the finest piece that I have read in months. -
Excellent, captivating write. Fluid transition from one verse/decade to the next. Great imagery. WOW!
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INCREDIBLE! This is such a fantastic piece, telling the entire life story of a person in a poem. You are brilliant and gifted my friend! I love the vocabulary and the humanity displayed in this work.
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I’ve read many poems that have brought tears to my eyes... but this... this left me sobbing... well actually, I started sobbing at stanza four... probably because I am in my thirties and in love with a balding, homely man with smelly feet. I also have a best friend who came home from collecting her son from school one day, a few years back, and found her beloved cold and still on the bathroom floor... so yes, this stanza hit me hard.
As I read on I found myself relating Lydia’s experiences to other important people in my life, my mother, my grandmothers and again myself... it’s like when you watch an emotional movie, like Beaches or similar, and you can’t stop crying for about 20 minutes after it’s finished... or is that just me? Anyway, that’s the effect reading this beautiful saga of Lydia has had on me.
I am book marking this poem to read whenever I feel in need of a good blubbing session, and on the grounds of this piece alone I am adding you straight to my favourites. I congratulate you on creating this wonderful character and sharing her story with us in this superb piece of writing.
Louise
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This is a beautiful tale of life! I have to be honest, when I saw the length I didn't want to read it, but I couldn't stop reading it. "open chip bags don't belong under the couch." hehehe
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At first I wanted to barf, but thankfully upon completing it?
Found it quite irresistable. Well done. There are a few small typos
but overall the effect of the piece is rather blunt and beautiful. -
Stunning
blink
I'm offically stunned. How amazing. You make her so real. We mourn when she does. We watch her grow and change. And in the end she reminded me of that sweet adorable old neighbor. It makes you realize that everyone goes through the same trials we all do. Amazing. -
what a truly beautiful story
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Astonishingly vibrant and utterly, completely absorbing. It was like being taken for a walk through a life brimful of extraordinary [ostensibly unremarkable] drama.
One of the most enthralling pieces I've read for some time. -
Beautiful
Wow this is a magnificent piece.It is so real.
The detail and flow is a warm embrace.
The true to life details make you feel like you know this person.Being shy can sure have its ups and downs too.
I enjoyed the chapters in her life.Is very inspiring! *o)
She is Beautful.....
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Here's your applause as promise
xoxoxox -
Hi, this is just wonderful, you took me on a wonderful mystical journey, it is a long time since someone wrote such a lovely narrative, beautiful ,sorry no points and at this hour in Italy all applauses have gone, this deserves many applauses, all the best hugs Di
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*****
Oh wow. It's not often I find something that gives me the shivers as badly as this did. I really wish I could think of something more useful to say, but I can't! It's probably been said above already anyway. I'm sorry, I don't have any applauds left
I'll bookmark this and applaud tomorrow, promise
Love Laura xoxoxox -
This is heartwarming...the way you made Lydia seem as if we know her now as well as through each decade of her life. I enjoyed it for that reason , but as well as for that there is a hero/ess in my life...or maybe was is now the right term , even though she will always be. Not a Lydia , but a Nola (hubby's great-grandmom). She passed away peacefully at the age of 109, each of her years a story....."here is to Lydia, to Nola, and to you for keeping her alive
z
reenie
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I was told to visit Your page and glad I did as this is written so very beautifully Josephine.
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Expertly written Poetry!
Intelligently penned! Superb links to varied aspects of time. Your ability to "Paint" each word on your canvas and then let the reader help with the interpretation so vividly lain as a short film. Applause to you Madam!
You are on my favorites list as one of the very best poets!
Thank you for sharing such wonderful work with this community.
Sammy -
wow this was a beautiful write... a true journey of one women's life through both the beauty and the tragedy... bringing out the complete essence of who she was, who she loved, who she lost, and what she achieved... I loved this, great write
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oh, god I think you've made an exhausting day worth living. I hope I live a life as worthy of such rich adjectives as Lydia's
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You caught our movement through the seasons and ages of life so very well ... bravo
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Oh, astonishing.
Such a neat and clear picture of different seasons of a woman's life! She's so different through each phase, and seems to change for the better as the years pass. It's so interesting to watch her age, and the end is wonderful.
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Hi John! Thank you so much for your sweet comments and encouragement. It's good to be back on all Allpoetry again. I missed it. I look forward to getting back in touch with your poetry as well. I enjoy, like you, the taste of a lifestyle and geographic area very different from mine.
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Chills
Absolute! This one always gives me the chills and makes me just a little sad. But there is strength in there too and a will and desire to go forward in LIFE! Most of all... it does not stray far from truth! Blessed you are with your great gift for words to express that which has been, and that which might be. May your life be long and joyful Sis!
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