Say you’ve spent your adult life
assuming you’re going to die
young, and it turns out you don’t.

Say the lifeline on your palm
insists you’ll be dead at thirty-six
but here you are aged fifty-four.

Say the descent beckoned before
you’d even reached the crest,
before you’d even lost the whiteness.

Say you spent your forty-eighth year
thinking of your dad who died that age –
too young – and all you felt was old.

Say your friends start dying, too soon,
and unexpected, when everyone
had always assumed it would be you.

Say the descent started early
but seemed to carry on for ever
later than the history of the world

Say you asked a Buddhist monk
at a funeral and she laughed and said
It’s about five words long.

Gary Twynam tries to make a living out of the things he loves. Management training, writing and gambling. Snoozing also. Income varies.