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FIVE YEARS ON!
In five years time I'll be eighty-three! I write it, feeling aghast!
How did the days of my lengthy life go flashing by so fast?
The thought should make me feel morbid, should make me weep and cringe,
Should make me dread the era of memory-loss and twinge.
The tragedy of age, it seems, it that ones stupid brain
Imagines one is still sixteen! One wants to start again!
Yet the tragedy is the boon, I think, for the plain and simple truth
Is that, inside, we all enjoy a never-ending youth!
At fifty I felt done-for! Ready to pop my clogs!
Ready to say that, already, I was going to the dogs!
That was nearly thirty years ago! Thirty fantastic years!
I've felt I was going backwards, away from the 'vale of tears'.
I've shed my responsibilities! My hobbies fill my life!
It's the middle years that test us.....parent, worker, wife.
'So twenty-fourteen! Welcome!' (Let's hope that's what I say!)
Although, of course, at seventy-eight, I might drop dead today!
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Self-congratulation here:
