I’m sliding down the ladder of life
Doing the Jacob thing in reverse.
Most of the people I meet now
Are either medical doctors or a nurse.
I’m in that phase where my hearing
Is about as good as my vision.
I don’t walk all that well at all
Due to my aging condition.

That’s the way things sometimes go
You might be clueless or you might know.
There may be signs so you can guess
Or you may find yourself a total mess.

Looking back over who I have been,
Like most of the young, I didn’t forsee
Or take much to heart the chances
That things like this would happen to me.
I thought myself invulnerable and
Incapable of ever growing old
Callously heeding no elders’s words
I simply refused to be told.

I thought the warnings I heard
Were from some clueless wags
And burned candles at both ends
Until the wick began to sag.

Now the creamy sooth skin,
Or what version I once ever had,
Begins to betray with brown spots,
And I admit it once made me mad.
But I have managed to accept
Many of the shortcomings of tomorrow.
It’s the loss of mobility I dislike;
That delivers me so much sorrow.