Seeing and Experiencing Transitions

 Went to a retirement party
for a library staff person
who had worked in that library
for thirty years.

I am really seeing the end of an era.
Slowly those who got a full time job in
the late sixties
early seventies
are retiring.

It's the last it seems of those
who had one job their whole life
and stayed in it
and did well.
At the same time I saw some old familiar faces
of people I used to work with
at my first job in Ottawa.
It indeed felt like a transition also for me.
For I too am in the process of saying goodbye.
 But like Madeleine L' Engle's book
certain women
the wave goodbye can also mean hello.