HAPPY OLDER GENTS

How happy are such older gents and ladies of the midlife bent

That we might live so long to see such things that in our youth ‘oft flee

That old and wise inspired thought that we’d know more than we’d know not

And chase away our early years of knowing all that we had thought

Was all that life was going to be and surely all that would be seen

But long enough to sense the fact that no one knows one’s life exact

It takes some time to live new things and know the changing times with kin

Not knowing how some days begin to show that new arrives again

For we who try to find what means to live a life and know what seems

To be the state of static time on earth is what appears in worth

And value once it first appears but changes as one’s life’s end nears

Then mirrors ourselves as young escort their children to their future years

I noticed all the different folks who found their way to family’s fold

And sure can call themselves as we as me though I am older told

But new unknown among us be the "those" with new proximity

Would see the same connected line between the “us” that lived through time

That now one present speaks of knowing some sustained and thus ongoing

But not the same old ones that breathe nor touched the hem or shirt coat sleeve

But thus I’m just a witness to the way known lineage forms anew

Sure those who in these days arrive have none of what we know behind

Who were just there as much as us but now are gone and watch us thus

And maybe laugh to see how quite we are like those gone in one night’s light

And rousts the joy of seeing new a line of loved one’s family few

Together in such normal ways without such thought for those past days.

I think about those old and gone when we would trip to grandmas home

And we were lacking lineage sense of all the whole entire meant

That likely made our aunts and men of days gone past imagine same

Of our new place in their same minds of those before in earlier times

And wondered if we’d get the sense of what the group would represent

Then came to sense what we now do that only older of us knew

So fresh and loved today’s young light once seeing all youth’s shear delight

To understand groups time expanse beyond the present clear light glance

The next young decade’s family line connects to us though we in decline

And thus a place in brief times past when groups like us depart at last

And look to new young family trees the former older ones will still there be

And then our age will thus reveal what we just found and elders feel