Today is my mom, (Christine Wickstrom’s) birthday, so before I get all poetic on your asses, let us take a moment:

Old Soul

They used to say, 
over coffee cups
behind her turned back
that she was an old soul

Even at six
when she struggled to sit pious
in pews too hard for anything
but retribution

Or dreamed beside lazy rivers
in tall, cool grass
feet barefoot and setting roots
in worship of the bigger gods

An old soul, she thought, was
used, misused, tarnished
and dented
worn thin like soles 
on the bottom of shoes

She thought her soul 
looked like beaten leather
unfairly pocketed
and scarred with use

Everyone else got a new one
right out of the box
the day they were born
the 'new soul' smell still clinging 
smooth, shiny, glowing 
with kinetic possibility

But what choice did she have?
Old was far better than none.

Six turned to sixteen
and all the years blended 
in hues of decisions
and roads taken

the ones where she felt,
memories walked beside her
and footsteps recalled 
and every where felt like home
in far off rooms of her old soul.

Sixteen to thirty
and on to forty
and on, and on
and her dented soul carried
tears and laughter 
just as well as any other

better

Because new souls, she learned,
were breakable and brittle
they faltered in storms and
dented at the slightest strike

In the same span of years
the glittering glow of the new
was thin like a grocery store bag, 
plastic urban jellyfish, aimless 
and at the whim of every breeze that blew

But old souls
are stalwart souls

They grounded roots
feet in dirt and 
sturdy branches rising.
Fingers tasting every flavor of life
without being swayed to break.

Old souls have lived it all before
and are wise to the ways
of errant breezes and
the fickle affections of years.

Old souls, she learned, came back
loved and experienced once more,
into only those vessels 
strong enough to carry them.