the course of a lifetime

by Tony Brennan

He’s a mature age student
with some midlife resistance to new tricks,
learning how to wash his hands properly
when he thought he learnt that early,
 
and has learnt only this season how to grow tomatoes,
how to cook zucchini slice so it rises in the tray,
how if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well,
and how to be responsible for his own happiness
 
and, less strong on this one, his own unhappiness
and how to accept himself in a less questioned way
or at least to sign up-for that course
though he might need to defer it to his shame.
 
And to learn in a sort of humiliating way
that at 55 years young
he is 5 and 15 and 25 and 15 and 5 again and all at once
and not showing much progress in his studies.
 
In fact, he seems to be stuck in grade 8 or 9
and if some life lesson might have happened then
he cannot recall which textbook it was in
and seems to have lost all his notes.

Poet biography:
Tony Brennan is a father of three, a teacher who works in a hospital, and lives in South Hobart with his wife Kate. He’s a poet and songwriter. His poetry arises from home life, observations and experiences – it has some edginess, humour and quirkiness. He published his first collection A Beauty that Catches in November 2016. For Tony ‘Poetry is like songwriting, but all the music is in the words and the spaces between them’.