NOW, WE IS: 60!

a Year 8 child
enquires
how old I be?

"I be
just...60!"
he gasps

"My God...you're very
active
for 60!"

60 for him is
a distant planet
in a galaxy far far

from here
yea...another
dimension

I smile
my 60 year old smile
perfected by now

I am starlight
that will only reach him
when he is 60 himself

if he ever
remembers what he has
long ago forgotten

*

Now We Are Six is a book of thirty-five children's verses by A. A. Milne, with illustrations by E. H. Shepard. It was first published in 1927. My title is of course a corruption of that as I begin the slow decay into the nothing at all.