50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

Earlier this year in these columns you may have labored through me creating poems from the regular prose of a news writer and a magazine columnist. They were fun for me and hopefully, for you. Some of us, in choosing our words can work into poetic phrasing. We learned English to use in speaking or writing. Speech is generally the practice we get at home. Writing is cultivated, or sometimes just “takes off.” This month I feature a fun read by a retired college professor. Meet C.Z. Hanzlicek, writing poetry about retirement after a 30 year voyage at California State, Fresno. Some of us 50+ers plan great retirements. Others go with the flow, when that’s necessary. The professor is a little of both. Wants and needs. Sometimes we can figure out a way to have both. Hanzlicek’s poem is fun. He appears to be content to wait, as time allows, in this daydream.

What I Want Is.

What I want is Enough money
To have what I want
What I want is my own hill
And beneath that hill
A pond
In that pond a lazy
Bass or two
And duck feathers
Resting on the mud
Of the shore
Between the hill
And mud a patch
Of grass where I
Can lie and count
My seven trees
My seven clouds
And count the coyotes
Coming down the hill
To drink
Coyote 1 Coyote 2

You might think this professor shows his bucket list, the current fun term for some kind of life’s fulfillment. We are in that part of summer-fall, the month of September, and ready, if not quite prepared, for new experiences, mostly in education, and in sports. One time eager learners,
we 50+ers will gather news from newspapers, favorite
magazines, or the Web.

There is always time for a daydream or two in retirement. Maybe the professor is fanciful, but have we dreamed to relocate (new wording for moving away) to acres, away from the large community, getting away from it all? Maybe there is aninterest in a motorhome, on the move, ending the day in a carefully planned location, authorized for these vehicles. To include the family pet that won’t be left to others.

Your writer has been fortunate in retirement, AND enjoyed experiences in forty years of broadcast “work.” We are comfortable with our daughter’s family nearby for special times like breakfasts, birthdays and holidays. We can expect the fall season to re-energize home skills, and get to some of the sports events that somehow become our ongoing bucket list. Join me here in October to shut down summer.