At the foothills of vintage age
you feel perceptibly less somber
for there are only meager remains
of mostly forgotten days -
      little to smile, rue or cry for
and an amorphous
yet obligingly finite future -
      trifling to put together or fight for.

So dear Chandra:
here is a congratulation:
It must be awesome -
this imminent privilege of geriatrics
and this stolen bit of transient freedom;
      the real laissez-faire to yearn
      and to die for.
timorously cajoled
from time’s exacting, puritan dictum.