Growing Old

As I grow older, I think about what has changed. This poem expresses some of those thoughts.
Growing old is confusing, A world inside that never squares with what you really are. Like waking up in some land where Alice lived, Never knowing when the rules will change. It is very strange. You feel able to do the things you did as a youth with dreams, that faith and work executed. They you try but find a rebellious body, a forgetful mind. The more you muse, The more you see. Your house of steel crumbling. Thoughts turn to a coming end. When you're young Life's an adventure like a novel, Never knowing where its author will delight or madden, Assured you will get to its end. When you're old, you never know if you will finish this chapter, putting the book to the side and leaving it there. Work began, projects started, Stand idle like the ancient stones waiting forever to be completed. Youth thinks not of death. Death embraces age, lurking in the corners of the mind as a shadow one ignores, clinging to the habit of the past. A time arives and mortality stares. We cannot ignore it, it is there before us with it's awesome fear. When it comes, we have no choice for death is what we, every one of us, share.
P.J. Wolf