An elderly dream

By Rhiannonw

Thu, 04 Dec 2025
  • 24 reads
3 comments
 

She sat in her chair
and thought and planned
a lovely vacation –
the preparation
expectation
anticipation;
she wrote and she booked
(confused, they looked
on – had she really?
how could she manage
should they speak and discourage,
disparage
such impossible, unworkable plans?);

and shortly before
the date she’d projected,
something suddenly
caused a sad cancellation,

but she’d really enjoyed
for so many hours, days, weeks
the execution, implementation, visitation
tasting and touching, walking and smelling
in dreamy imagination
memories rekindled
of times and abilities long past:
hallucination?

[IP: anticipation]

This is fictional but based on memories of a real incident and person, though the details are now hazy

Certificate U
Poem
Families
Travel
Love
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)

Comments

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Making plans is so easy when you're young, but as we age the anticipation is great, but the actual doing is something else that's harder to cope with.

You've explained this in your poem very well Rhiannon.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

There's little more disheartening than a cancelled holiday, especially if it's at the last minute.

However, my first ever visit to Bulgaria was hastily arranged when another holiday I had spent months planning had to be pulled at short notice. A day or two of big disappointment turned into a life-changing moment for me.

Turlough

Submitted by Tom Brown on

Isn't it ironic Rhiannon? Tragic. Reminds us to live in the "now" and the story is like my late mother she also had grand plans for touring the world she saved many years had the money and time and everything but then in the end she passed unexpectedly and rather suddenly.

In her time she already had done some travellling she loved it with all the "old aunties"! She must have had some good funds but we haven't seen much of it, feels more like a prisoner.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why we call it "the present".

See you! Tom