Publisher’s Note: Why Did You Write It?

 

I asked German poet, Britta Kollberg, why she wrote Midlife More?

 “The most honest answer?   I wrote it because I had to.

It was in there and needed to come out.

It needed to come out in order to find shape

and to give  shape to what my life has become.”

Midlife More

By Britta Kollberg

Narrated by Jennifer Lagier Felguth

I could have become an opera singer
flying on the magic carpet of my own voice
from the stage to the ends of the world;
or I could have trained more and become a ballet dancer
centering all my energy onto meeting the tact, onto the tenth of a second
that makes me sink back on the floor
with the violin’s cry.

I could have become a guitar player
singing my questions
so that those who don’t read
cut-down poetry
may hear the lyrics in brighter, more amplified verse.

I could have studied more
and more deeply
the myths of our neighbors’ forefathers.
I could have known and known
more and shared the wisdom of scriptures and power fights
in aphorisms
twittered and re-twittered around the globe.

I could have married
if I could have
and raised four children, through fever cramps
and dinner table stories where I would fight the TV
and tell them the truth: that the only pink is in five candles
on a one-time sweet birthday cake
and in that floating cloud after the sunset
each night.

I could have continued working and giving money to charities, visiting friends
and traveling and sleeping in on weekends and waking up
exhausted. I could have done more for other people, given more of myself
and changed a bigger part of the world.
I could have blinded myself with the colors of struggle and fate,
pink sense before dinner.

Instead, I am eating.
Watching movies about other people’s fight
and fate
losing my senses in
the beauty of story and truth of fiction.
I eat well and healthy, and fast food and junk,
I eat hungry and full and still
hungry now
after midnight.