Submitted as a comment by Jerry Robbins

HOBBLED

I shall spend my last few years
Very close to bitter tears
For I have become quite unable
To sit up to the dining table

My back is badly out of whack
And will not stay properly on track
My hips ache deeply to the bone
My legs have lost all muscle tone

But I will not make a show
For the alternative I certainly know
A walker or awkward wheel chair
Or nursing home with contract care

So I must get myself to the table
Shuffling along as I am able
And leave my growing dark dismay
For some other time some other day

Time Flies

How was I to know
The years would go
As fast as they sped away
I look back
And see no track
No expansive yesterday

It’s empty space
The brief race
Across the temporal plain
How give account
Of all that time
I’m at a loss to explain

It’s the speed that’s it
Years compressed in time
How did it happen
This Mach 3 flight
There is no reason or rime

I would this speed deny
It makes no sense to me
Until I look around at all my friends
Who have speedily become
Just as old as me

This is the fix that we are in
We are defined by our age
But young or old
Ancient or new
All a brief time on the stage

So I’ll take my trip
Not complain about it
It was a good ride
I can say
And now near done
One final run
At the end of the hastening day

The Colonoscopy

Here’s to the bum on which we sit
The doctors want to look at it
And here’s to those who take a look
Professional, swift, and by the book

To all those who chose this speciality
I’m glad it’s them instead of me.

My Brain

No matter
How often
I lecture my brain
It seems to me
To have its own train
That carries it off
With some vagrant thought
About what there is or what there nought.

To never-never land it goes
Flowers and fantasies
And some detouring woes
Picking up baggage along the way
The gossip going around
And the news of the day

There are few stops
I’m sorry to say
Like Truth and Wisdom
and Light for the day
The conductor is crude
And chews tobacco
Yet he steers the way
And along I must go