GRAVE MATTERS

Interesting how our viewpoints change throughout our lives. A child will view a house as a castle, towering and overwhelming, while its parent will probably grumble that the place is too small and that they need to start looking for something larger.
We return to some paradise of former days, view it through different eyes and wonder why we ever liked it in the first place. 
So, too, do our social and political views change as we grow older. Youthful idealism gives way to mature pragmatism as the the world's walls close in around us.
We move from infancy to maturity: evolve from being someone's child to become a parent, then, in no time at all it seems, a grandparent faced with the stark knowledge that both of these new generations will see us out.   
That's when it all begins to get a bit scary.   

ST SAMPSON'S CHURCHYARD 2017

When young I’d prowl among headstones,
examine weathered dates and names,
admire old plinths with skulls and bones
or crosses with engraver’s claims.
Death had allure and, thrillingly,
its strange, exotic pageantry
was then unreal, remote to me.

Not now, when age afflicts these bones,
uneven ground portends a trip
and bending down to study stones
can make these damn bifocals slip,
it all seems far too real for me:
death’s bloody grim finality,
its awful anonymity.