Growing old together And Other Poems
ALSO BY ROBERT W. NERO
NON-FICTION
The Great Gray Owl: Phantom of the Northern Forest,
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980
Redwings, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983
Owls in North America: Nature Stories for Children
(Canadian Album Series)
(with Aleta Karstad & Frederick W. Schueler), Hyperion Press, 1987
Lady Grayl: Owl With a Mission, Natural Heritage Books, 1994
The Site: A Personal Odyssey, Natural Heritage Books, 2001
POETRY
Woman By the Shore and Other Poems:
A Tribute to Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, Natural Heritage Books, 1990
The Mulch Pile and Other Poems, Natural Heritage Books, 1993
Spring Again and Other Poems, Natural Heritage Books, 1997
Growing old together and Other Poems, Natural Heritage Books, 2005
Growing old together And Other Poems
Robert W. Nero
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS
TORONTO
Copyright © 2005 by Robert W. Nero
All rights reserved. No portion of this book, with the exception of brief extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.
Published by Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc.
P.O. Box 95, Station O, Toronto, Ontario M4A 2M8
www.naturalheritagebooks.com
All visuals are from the author’s collection unless otherwise identified.
Cover design by Neil Thorne
Text design by Blanche Hamill, Norton Hamill Design
Edited by Jane Gibson
Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Book Printing
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nero, Robert W., 1922-
Growing old together : and other poems / Robert W. Nero.
ISBN 1-897045-11-5
I. Title.
PS8577.E58G76 2005 C811’.54 C2005-905480-8
Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc. acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Association for the Export of Canadian Books.
“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”
The French Lieutenant’s Woman—JOHN FOWLES
“…as usual when a pretty girl looked at him, he was contemplating a life-long relationship.”
Single and Single—JOHN LE CARRÉ
“All writers suffer from an insatiable need to be loved.”
—LES AMOUREUSES
“You read or hear every now and then of a romance starting up between middle-aged or even elderly people who knew each other years earlier. People who throw over long-established, comfortable marriages or sensible lives for the chance to love again in a particular way—a way that connects them with who they used to be, with how it felt to be that person. And now…I could understand the potency of that connection. The self-intoxication you pass off to yourself as intoxication with someone else.
While I Was Gone—SUE MILLER
“Every writer carries a canker in his heart, a devouring monster, like the tapeworm in the stomach, which destroys all feeling as it arises in him.”
Temptation In Paris—HONORÉ DE BALZAC
“I don’t know what it is about poets that draws women to them in this way. But everybody knows that a poet has only to sit and saw the air with his hands and recite verses in a deep stupid voice, and all the women are crazy over him. Men despise him and would kick him off the verandah if they dared, but the women simply rave over him.”
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town—STEPHEN LEACOCK
“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.”
Walden—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
“She’s brim full of poetry—actualized poetry, if I may use the expression. She lives what paper-poets only write….”
Tess of the D’Urbervilles—THOMAS HARDY
Contents
Revelations of Ruth—Part II
I BETWEEN US
Growing old together
Ruth
Operation
Inner Self
Reminder
Overheard Phone Call
Surprise Treat
Shifting Vision
Olympic Spirit
Children’s Tokens
Patterns