The Price You Pay

The Price You Pay

What a whopper price it is - the price you pay
For being especially blessed in our world and allowed to stay.
You trade youth and beauty for wrinkles and weak knees.
You see your hair change to white, as nature decrees.

Your speed goes from ninety to about five. Only your pulse determines if you're alive.
Your reflexes are slower than you ever, in your worst nightmare, would contrive.
People talk to your younger friends as if you'd suddenly lost your hearing
And that, dear one, is very, very "dis-endearing."

Not every person over seventy is senile - just because their speed is slower
And they no longer desire to mow a big yard with that mower.
Most are as intelligent as ever, with loads of experience and wisdom. Do not discard
Them, at this wonderful time when life is not so overloaded or so hard.

Let the Autumn of their lives be the best of all their years.
Minus youth, speed and beauty and some horrible youthful fears -
Let their latter years be their contribution to help and to share.
All the experience and hard earned-wisdom they have acquired and would dare to share.

This is the price we pay for being allowed to stay so let us all say
Our version of life and how it was for us. We may have garnered, in some small way,
Some answers that came the hardest way, but might, still, be useful for another day.
If you've lived past seventy, I'm positive you have many, many things to say!

And don't tell us, "But times have changed." A lot has changed but we keep up.
We not only keep up but we never give up and we're most likely to follow up.
Cause, my younger friend, some things never change, as you will find.
In this older person's mind and experience - you may just find a real gold mine.