LIFE BY THE TENS

Editor's note: "We tend to consider the life span of man in decimal units," Dad wrote in the introduction to this poem. "Nobody, for example, looks at thirty-six or fifty-two as turning points."

At twenty, no longer in your teens,
You've become a grown-up at last;
Your future's a shining beacon ahead,
And darkness swallows your past.
You reach your peak of vigor and vim
At the age of thirty or so;
Now, you're smack in the prime of ife,
And full of the old gung-ho!

At forty, they tell us life begins,
For some people maybe it will;
But others now are fighting the fear
They're almost over the hill.
At fifty, you've come to the awkward age,
And are losing some of your fire,
Feeling the wear and tear of life,
But still too young to retire!

The next decade goes galloping by,
Faster than ever, it seems;
You find that you're beginning to have
More memories now than dreams.
Seventy falls in the golden years,
But also, let me remind you,
Three-score and ten decidedly means
Your future is mostly behind you!

I hate to end on a negative note,
But there's another thing to it,--
If you haven't made your pile by now,
You probably ain't gonna do it.
If I had any precept in mind,
Or moral, in writing this rhyme,
It's give it your best, at whatever age,
And to heck with Old Father Time!

--Acres of Verse (1994)