Youth! How Hastily Wast Thou Spent!
How I pine for those carefree days when I was seventeen!
I weighed a mere hundred twenty pounds and was rather lean!
I thought I could mount an Arab steed and conquer the world!
Before me bold adventures beyond the horizon lay unfurled!
In my precarious youth I never dreamed of growing old.
I assumed I'd be seventeen forever, truth be told!
But suddenly in the blink of an eye I was thirty-five,
Then I reached fifty, so stealthily did it arrive!
I hardly turned around and suddenly I was sixty-five.
Grandson Zach exclaimed, "But Grandpa, you're still alive!"
A reward upon reaching that exalted rung of maturity,
Was that I became eligible for medicare and social security!
So quickly did I reach the age of seventy, a septuagenarian.
I might as well hang around and become an octogenarian!
Though I enjoy the privileges of the golden years, forsooth,
I'd much prefer the unpretentious days of my youth!
Oh, feckless youth, how hastily thou wast spent.
I clasped thee to my bosom and was so content.
But anon you abandoned me much too soon.
I really think that was so inopportune!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
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