Aging

A poem celebrating living into older life

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Do not fear the passing of the years
celebrate each moment you have lived,
reaching half a century. This feels so
impressive, stately, filled with wisdom
accumulated over half a century. Wow.

Then we reach three score years, sixty,
a lovely round number which matches
perhaps a slight rounding of form, softening
into older age, losing the sharp angles
of youth, impatience, frustrations with life.

Do you still want more, or are you now
settling for enough, for being where you are
after all. Is it so bad simply to arrive, to be here?
Having lived, and loved, and lost, perhaps
in equal measures, equal pain and joy, a subtle

balance through one’s life, sharing the lived
experiences with those around us. Then we come
to Shakespeare’s three score year and ten,
another angular number perhaps as our faces
become etched by experience, yet it is softened