​POETRY  -  
          With a Theme of Time 

"your mind's wild moor"
​
                                      Photo by Weebly                                    

Advice to the Aging Self
by MaryLee McNeal

Exorcise the need to be right.
Don’t rave about the ways
you’ve failed.
Guard your solitude.
Give yourself over
to laughter,
wave after wave.
Make yourself a bridge
between what was
and what must be.
Shred what’s left
of your ego,
let its pieces
soften the path
like trampled leaves.
Memorize the poems
you need to survive
in case you’re blinded
on your mind’s wild moor
before you die.

Vertical Divider

MaryLee McNeal is retired from teaching. Her stories and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Bellevue Literary Review and Green Mountains Review. Her novel, Home Again, Home Again won the San Francisco State’s Clark Award in 1989, and her poetry chapbook, The Space Between Us, won the Bear Mountains Press Award in 2002.  A second chapbook of poems, The Way We Fall, with an introduction by Jack Hirschman, was published in 2014. She is seeking publication for a second novel, Saint Kate’s, revising a manuscript of linked stories, and recently enjoyed her first OLLI classes in memoir and poetry with Kathleen McClung.

Editor's note: MaryLee McNeal is a first-time contributor to Vistas & Byways  

Other works in this issue:
Nonfiction:
​Memory
Poetry: 
Time Is Marching On

Vertical Divider

We Welcome Comments