Photo: Scott Robinson/Creative Commons/Flickr

Amy Losak explores the plight of the older woman in the workplace in today’s feature of the International Women’s Haiku Festival.

millennial workplace
the boomer colors her gray
more often

Western culture’s obsession with youth is in part responsible for making aging more spiritually difficult than it needs to be.  And even though millennials have a bit of a PR problem when it comes to common (mis?)perceptions of their work ethic, younger workers still seem more highly valued than older ones.  Raise all of this to the third or fourth power when it comes to women, in particular.  Losak’s “boomer” –  who can hope only to erase with the dye bottle the effects of the years because the years themselves won’t come off – is a sympathetic character who speaks for many.

***

peeling tree bark
she hides her spotted hands
in the interview

Losak’s haiku paints a picture of an aging woman’s subtle act of desperation.  Surely the spots on the hands are not the only clues about the woman’s age, but they might be the only clues the woman thinks she can hide from those who hold in their hands the fate of her livelihood.

Amy Losak, of Teaneck, NJ, is a public relations professional.  She recently started writing haiku and senryu in honor of her late mother, Sydell Rosenberg, a charter member of the Haiku Society of America in 1968 who published her work in journals and anthologies.