THE AGING PROCESS
I’m losing touch with reality,
An everyday elderly malady.
But it’s no mere formality;
It ushers in a new spirituality.
My former life was about dough, rays, and me;
Now I tend lower branches of the family tree.
Once I maneuvered ham-handedly to be free;
Unaware that commitment drives tranquility.
The transformation rises above philosophical things:
My once mighty arms have shriveled into chicken wings.
And whenever that damn doorbell rings,
It merely signals what the pharmacy brings.
Long ago life was a big bowl of cherries,
Santas, leprechauns, mermaids, and tooth fairies.
I curried favor with all my contemporaries,
Unafraid of colonoscopies, cholesterol, and coronaries.
Then came a long corridor of confusion,
Where options appeared in bewildering profusion.
Every opportunity I mistook for intrusion,
And happiness, for a laughable and hopeless illusion.
Of that harrowing hallway there remains no detail,
My memory’s gone thankfully off the rail.
But I still feel a wisp of wind in my sail,
Gone forever, that furious injurious gale.
