On Looking Back

On Looking Back

At the age of ten I felt sure
that I was from another planet
and my parents had found me,
abandoned, under a bush somewhere.
When I was twenty I decided that,
since no one over thirty
was to be trusted, my time would likely end
when I was forty, ten years being
as much as I would stand being
in an untrustworthy state.
At thirty, I was too busy to think,
being caught up in my roots,
taking guidance from ancestral genes
in the land of my birth.
At my surprise fortieth birthday party,
I was bad tempered, morose,
there being no sign of my end,
and, at the age of fifty, I accepted
I’d been wrong about the forty thing
and began to enjoy just living.
Sixty surprised me as surely a mistake,
but seventy arrived and I’m still here,
hale, a bit frayed at the edges,
cobbled together in places worn out,
but still hearty and with senses intact.
You can say that I wasted my years
and you’d be right, but it’s in the wastage
that learning occurs. I’d not have missed
that for the world.


Line Count: 29
Free Verse
For The Taboo Words Contest, November 2020
Prompt: Thankfulness
Taboo Words: Thankful, grateful, thoughtfulness, family, celebration, or any derivatives of these words