The Old Story Teller

Smiter on Jun 19, 2009

Tags: ageing, family, Story Teller

One which I wrote for a poetry competition and am reading at a Poetry event as a result. I will know how successful it has been at the beginning of July.

What will it be like when I grow old?

Will my legs wobble?

Will my back fold?

Will I get narky and shout at kids

For running around

Banging dustbin lids

Will I have glasses to help me read?

Will I become deaf?

What will be my needs?

One thing I know about growing old

I will have stories

Those need to be told

There will be songs which need to be sung

To add to the things

To share with the young

Just as my parents shared them with me

I’ll share with children

Sat on my old knee

Sitting around my old worn armchair

I’ll be a teller

Of how things once were

Bringing alive tales of being young

Telling them the stories

Of how things begun

Then I won’t care if my back is bent

I’ll tell them these tales

Till my life is spent

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Comments (2)

ken bultman on Jun 19, 2009
Well done. The young have no stories to tell…they must have the old to hear them. Good luck with the competition.
Karen Gross on Jun 19, 2009
Lovely poem – very well written! I’m sure that you tell wonderful stories to your children and grandchildren. My girls are 13 and 15, and they mostly ask me to tell the stories of embarrassing things they did as babies or toddlers. I have shared a few of these in Triond articles, and had to offer to pay them.

I try not to think of how I will be physically when I get older. I have had Parkinson’s since I was about 35 and it is progressing rapidly. I look at the older people at my neurologist’s office, and most of them are more disabled than I am. But who knows? There could be medical breakthroughs or even a cure, or I could be divinely healed. I try to live in the moment.

The Old Story Teller

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