Birthday!

Birthday! Oh what a joyful day when four.
Happy carefree and just starting your life;
You look forward to each and then to one more.
Age has no trouble or peril or strife.

When then a teenager, please come sixteen.
Then you look forward to what, twenty-one?
Then there are Big Ones with not much between.
It seems like they become less and less fun.

When you finally reach over eighty,
Celebration is much more poignant, now.
The impending end seems much more weighty
As friends and family take their last bow.

Birthdays may come and most all will be swell,
What’s more important is who will you tell?