I will soon be three quarters of a century.
A pig-tailed sprite next-door heard seventy-five
and exploded, Wow, that's old!
She is right, of course,
and it set me pondering.
I can now view one hundred years
without straining fantasy,
feel a century roll right through me.
 
When I hear other elders complain
and, even more,
when fifty-somethings speak their dread,
I find myself wondering,
What's wrong with being old?
There is culmination here,
and treasure.
I know, of course, the aching joints,
the awkward rising from a couch,
and faulty memory and painful loss,
but what I also see so clearly
are the gifts
that needed the polish of years,
the gentle laughs and generosity.
With grace the old grow golden hearts
shaped by joys and sorrows lived,
by pains and inner gains
all finely cured
in time's slow fire.


© by Signe Eklund Schaefer.
Used with the author's permission.