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Poems by
Mary Fogarty
—To Sage-ing Elders—
those alert, witty, compassionate mavericks,
cultural visionaries and daydreamers
who listen, accept, influence, spur and inspire.
With courage and relentless determination,
you rise above social stereotypes to encompass
the worldly-wit, beauty and wisdom
of humanity in its entirety.
Giving reverence to the past upon which futures are built,
you live life deliberately
to become a light force for walking each other home
toward completion.
~Mary
Fogarty~
Vintage Woman: A Memoir
is one woman’s odyssey into Elderhood not as the Third and Final Act, but as the
most intuitive, aware, insightful, enlightened, well-informed stage of her
experience. Through prose and poetry Mary Fogarty taps into the
multi-dimensional aspects of the human spirit and into the heart of Elders. She
appeals to all Elders to live beyond self-interest and self-preservation.
Consciously shifting from adulthood to elderhood, Vintage Woman invites
Pro-agers to treasure their inner beauty and divinity and to harvest past
experiences for their futures. As an increasingly large population of Pro-agers,
healthier, better educated, economically secure and psychologically more
sophisticated, discover individual rights and freedoms beyond personal
tragedies, Vintage Woman invites Elders to serve the larger community
with their “collective wisdom.”
Another poem:
Marmalade and Ginger Tea
by Mary
Fogarty
I remember Grandpa turned away a
lot.
His bald spot reflected the New Year’s
garden plot and stacks of saffron hay,
harvested.
Grandmother with her greenhouse
hose held a pose that scolded,
“get your fricken act back here,
Hubby, Dear.”
The simple deeds of grandparents
didn’t mean much to me—
their history blocked—until a voice
from their past willed a twist of tongue.
Enriched by Grandma’s pioneer spirit,
I began to model and shape a yesteryear
that resurrected them in poetry
and prose—written in bold letters.
A heavy winter’s rain wilted the fields
of corn stalks and fallen grain into a heaped decay,
Grandpa mowed and mulched the fodder
to nurture seeds for another day.
It all came back like a crystal-mirror.
Grandpa’s head shone the ivory frost
of a Spring land seer as he plowed
and planted wheat and corn
for the coming year.
Cares behind, heart ahead—sunshine spread.
Jam and marmalade on toasted bread served
well with spicy ginger tea to dissipate
clumps of peach from Grandma’s cannery.
I, held on her battered knee, tucked under
quilted patterns of Douglas Fir forestry,
listened as Grandma rocked me into
a Polish parody filled with eerie castles
and the boogey-man’s lunacy.
The coo-coo-clock struck noon
as Grandma sipped off her spoon—
a hummer’s humping ecstasy
beaked in waters of clover leaf tea
and honey fermented in brownstone stills.
With sunken, rheumy eyes
and lurid tongue memories
I hear her wise story bits flow
through pink grapefruit lips.
Plump jowls jiggle as Grandma
spoke of Wisconsin farms fowl.
“Know your garden and
how roots grow down to firmly fix
in fertile ground. And how plants
push up to surround a sturdy bush or tree
laden with ruby-red fruit to feed the family.”
As history’s seepages dance by,
dry crinkled leaves bobbed and dipped
against an amber sky—
Simple deeds now won, my sweet tongue
becomes witness to a winter cellar
of green marmalade and ginger tea.
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