On Turning Fifty
A five and a zero.
Numbers.
The big one creeping up,
Five...
Four three two one!
The countdown has begun
The race is on.
Big one creeping up so fast
I can hear the crack of the gun.
The big five... Oh
My mother didn't make it past.
I've been told that that's your big one,
Your own ceiling of glass;
That it creeps into your psyche,
Your parents to outlast.
I've been working for a while
To quit smoking before forty,
Success five years too late.
Five to go, the age that she was shortly.
Fifteen years six months eight days between us
Is as close as we ever got.
I don't need closer now,
I have a second shot;
I almost died with no idea what hit me,
A tragic but not sad how.
So to me it does occur
To slowly drown as your lungs fill
Is to fill a fate
I would much rather defer.
17.04.08
For On Turning Fifty Contest
Copyright © Maureen McGreavy Pigeon Tart | Year Posted 2017
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