CARRY ON TUESDAY
asks us to use the translation, in blue, from Dante's Inferno
MID-LIFE CRISIS
Midway in life's journey we get a nasty jolt.
Suddenly it hits us like a thunder bolt.
We' re no longer youthful; we're on the downward slope;
Now's the time for stock-taking, not for living-on hope.
All our youthful dreaming has simply come to nought;
We didn't 'make it by thirty'....that's a solemn thought.
The fifth decade is hard to bear....well, it was hard for me.
Without youth's happy thoughtlessness or age's gravity.
Fifty is a tricky age, we carry society's load,
And we're not yet sweet old ladies folk will help across the road!
I hated being fifty! It was such a sexless age!
Youth is gold, old age is mauve but fifty's sort of beige.
As a young girl I was carefree, and today I feel the same;
Now I'm eighty life, once more, is just a simple game.
No mortgages, no dependants, and no hopeless expectations;
This 'second childhood' is great fun despite its limitations.
Midway in life's journey life can seem rather glum,
But hang on and keep smiling.
Better days are sure to come!
*
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THE DRAGONFLY
If I should be a dragonfly,
Knowing I were going to die,
What would my view of Heaven be
As I existed flutteringly?
Would I think of a cloudless blue
With nothing else for me to do
But skim the flowers and the trees
Floating on a personal breeze?
Would I expect to skim and soar
For evermore, for evermore?
The only certainty would be this......
An eternity of endless bliss
Was waiting for me in the sky!
Oh foolish, foolish dragonfly!
*
