Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared in Only Poems, Whale Road Review, Rattle, Abandon Journal, and Minyan. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig. Learn more.
What past event do you often reflect upon, and how did that event change you?
I was an awkward guy well into my forties. In grad school, I befriended Dan, the gregarious, confident antipode to guarded and insecure me. Once when we were grocery shopping, as we approached the cashier at the grocery store, Dan smiled and greeted her with a friendly “Hey, how ya doin’.” She responded in kind and they chatted amiably as we checked out. As we left, I asked how long he’d know her. “I didn’t,” he responded. That was the day I learned to smile and greet everyone I encountered with kindness and curiosity.
How does your work add to the quality of your life?
I think of the inverse of this question: “How does the quality of your life add to your work?” That said, I’ve never been a person who has really segregated work from the rest of my life. What I did for money was just one of the things I did — like gardening and playing music and raising my kids. I never thought, as an elementary school teacher for example, “this is my work.” It was just what I did. Now that I am largely “retired” and spend my days writing, gardening, cooking, cleaning and …, it continues to all be “what I do” rather than “what work I do.”
Tell us a story you would like to share with the world.
Aging in Place*
I thought that as age changed us, I would not be
so jealous of that gingham shirt, of the water you
stand under in the shower, of the sheets that don’t
need consent to wrap around you in the night, replete.
I thought that old men’s lusts were tamed beasts,
not needing a leash or cage to constrain and that
old women’s skin would not make me forget
my other appetites. But here I am, incomplete ––
your shoulder bare in your rolled sleeve work-shirt,
your skirt revealing just enough of your thigh and I
want to greet each with my hand, to be the soft shirt,
the clean sheets, the water. And you and your thirst,
when you see me? I still don’t know how you can
resist the cockled bruised skin of such an aging man.
*First appeared in Rattle
Author photo: Courtesy of author
Side bar image: Pixabay/Edar
