SOME OF HER DREAMS   

At eight
her sibs dubbed her the pet—
she got
most everything she wanted.

At sixteen
she was valedictorian
voted
most likely to succeed.

At twenty-one
a wife;
at twenty-three a mother,
succeeding at what she wanted most.

At thirty-two
she learned to drive
in a ’47 black Mercury.
It never came easy.

At forty-six
she wiggled under
Jamaica’s limbo stick
to wild native applause.

At fifty
with children gone
she retired as
first-to-rise breakfast chef.

At sixty
she floated
with the clouds
in a beautiful balloon.

At seventy-three
she rafted the Colorado,
her guide shouting all the way,
“We’re all gonna die!”

At eighty-one
after sixty happy marriage years
and a passel of children, grands, and greats,
she found herself a widowwoman.

At ninety
she’d fractured a hip
lost her license
and downsized

to a single room.
That’s when she said,
“Some of my dreams
will never come true.”

Carole Coates

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (No machine-readable source available)