NEXT PLEASE!

Whilst it's pleasing to exceed one's three score years and ten and continue to survive, the downside is that month after month, one's contemporaries fall prey to terminal illnesses and prepare to join that great, silent majority, the dead.

 





MAKING SPACE

A sober card for sympathy:
words of condolence, trite but true ...
we write them now so frequently
as deaths of friends slowly accrue.
We cannot help but feel concern
as we grow old and wait our turn.

The world repopulates so fast
that when we’re gone we’re soon replaced
by models surely built to last,
smooth skinned, bright eyed, strong limbed, fresh faced,
that will obtain wealth, power, romance.
We can’t complain: we had our chance.