Youth, so Wasted on the Young

By Tony DeLorger © 2011

If only my body mirrored my mind, I’d be twenty.

I’d be running five miles a day and doing twenty laps to boot.

Twenty miles on the bike and be early for dinner.

Instead I nurse my last arthroscopic surgery,

and hope that I don’t click when I walk.

Could you grab that can up there for me?

The spur on my shoulder gives me pain,

but only when I move.

The broken clavicle’s all healed now,

but the shoulder tear, not so much.

When I was twenty, I could see my toes,

and they were attached to my feet, I could see them too.

Now there is a forest upon an undulating hill

that casts a shadow over my lower extremities.

Hell, if I couldn’t feel my legs, I’d have no idea they were there.

I wish I was twenty so I wouldn’t play basketball, tennis or squash.

I pushed myself to the limit and damn near wore myself out,

at least my joints.

My opposable thumbs are done too,

from all that antique restoration.

What did I do that was good for me I wonder?

I wish I was twenty so I could go all night,

be the virile and passionate man I used to be.

Now I’m laden with pills, trying to arrest the possibility

of early endings and maintaining balance.

Instead I am forced to accept ineptitude, comparatively.

How I love my age, my learned insights and wisdom,

if only I could impart that to a twenty-year-old body.

Youth is so wasted on the young.