The Seasons of Life

See the Spring - this is you, from birth to Nineteen,

Young… fresh… full of promise and hope,

As you're learning from parents and teachers and such,

What to do, where to go, how to cope,

You live your life fully, not knowing much care

With your fashions, and music, and games,

Ah, Youth in its splendour, these are your young years,

How good that you need so few aims.

Here is Summer, you've now left the Springtime of life

As you head on up to Forty Five,

You still enjoy life, with all that it brings,

In fact you are glad you're alive,

But with marriage and mortgage and children and things

Life has taken a new kind of slant,

And life's many demands take their toll of you now,

Things you'd love to just do, but you can't.

Hello Autumn, the next stage is Three Score and Ten,

And things now seem much slower of course,

Or is it because you can't do things as quick,

No longer a young prancing horse,

Your vacations are more of the quieter kind,

And your pursuits demand less of you,

You probably have many chores to perform,

But your back gets the better of you!

Oh, here's Winter, and how long does Winter prevail,

Sometimes short, sometimes long, but it's chilly,

And to think that we know how long we might have left

Is presumptuous, decidedly silly,

But we make do with what we have energy-wise,

And enjoy every laugh we can scrounge,

For there's many who wait the Next Life, the New Spring

As they sit  in God's Departure Lounge.

©  John Pemberton (1997)