If you can smile when met with “How ya doing?”
and skip the vain recital of your ills;
can feed your body healthy stuff, eschewing
the couch when steps can take the place of pills:
If you can reminisce without digressing,
can listen to a fussy baby squall
and, flinching, still consider it a blessing
to hear and see and taste and feel at all:
If you can watch a younger person flounder
and not usurp responsibility;
if, judging no one, pimp or pulpit-pounder,
you trust the love of God to oversee:
Then disregard the ravages of time
and take a bow, old sage, you’re in your prime.
———
2006 Mary Boren
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