I am not Qualified to Write One Word

I am not qualified to write one word
About the world or its suffering masses.
I’m safe, cowardly, coddled for disease.
Most of my words are nonlethal gasses.

I can’t escape my woman’s clinging skin.
I can’t see beyond the fairy tale to life.
I am human, I am mortal, One cell.
In this vast reality. More than wife.

Adrienne, Sylvia, how did you lose
The steel of a Maya or an Alan?
You sang like larks, then flung yourselves away.
And we never heard your sweet voices again.

I must not make of you model or Muse.
I must not let mere loneliness still me.
I must not let romance censor me or
Stop me from being all that I can be.

A senior citizen...still a student
With the clock running, no time for the past
Which can’t be changed or reconciled today.
Do it today before I breathe my last.