It's one of those significant birthdays on Sunday (I chalk up the half-century, if you're wondering!) but here's something I wrote a couple of years back:

 

Another birthday

 

Another birthday looms,

Though, at our age, we fail to mark it

In any form of childish celebration,

Unless it is a special one

That ends in zero.

We’re now too old, we say,

For that sort of thing.

(Though, sometimes, secretly

We wish that someone would remark

How good we look;

How well we’ve kept.)

For, though the years have passed,

We pride ourselves

How, in our minds, we still feel

Like we did at twenty,

Though running for the bus

Is one of those activities,

Like picking up dropped change,

We have consigned to history,

Proclaiming that we’re in no hurry:

You can sprint, if you want to,

We tell our young companions.

There’ll be another soon.

But, if we stall too long,

We’ll find that all the world

Has boarded and left us behind

And that there are no buses

For us to hail and ride.

And sullenly we’ll sit

Rueing our misfortune

Created not by others

But by ourselves alone

For, through intransigence

And curmudgeonly naivety,

We’re on our own again,

Stuck, waiting at the stop

While everyone has gone ahead.

So, then we’ll trudge

And grumble as we have to walk

Our painful, slow way home,

Meandering to our dotage.

Another birthday, then,

So that is it: the end

To all ambition’s soaring hope

And so we should, by rights,

Quite uncomplainingly

Don fluffy slippers,

Make ourselves a cup of tea

And waste our evenings

Slumped, recumbent, on the sofa

Sedated into dullness by TV.

There is no call for us

To be of earthly use

And all our get-up-and-go

Got up and went,

A while ago, into oblivion.

But just before

We consign ourselves

To the overflowing dustbin

Of redundant humanity,

We take a stand and shout:

Hold on, we’re not done yet –

For yet another birthday

Must just surely serve

To urge us on

And not dwell on the past,

Since one more year

Crossed out upon life’s calendar

Just tips the balance book

A jot more further

Into the red of days all spent.

And so before

The credit all runs out

It’s spend, spend, spend,

Must be our mantra,

Making all we can

Of that time we have left,

Though hours fly faster now

Than they did when young

And every passing year

Is more insignificant,

A smaller fraction of the whole.

Let’s steel ourselves, renewed

For unknown challenges ahead

And grasp that nettle,

Take charge and sail

Out on the oceans

Of possibilities.

Another birthday?

Hah! We fail to mark it

Since we have so much

To do instead.

Let’s leave those fripperies

Just one more year.