Can you love the wrinkles on your face?
Can you love you, old and gray?
Can you love the crying infant?
Can you love someone today?

Can you love the hobbled old man?
Can you love the arrogant youth?
Can you love the lover of money?
Can you love the speaker of truth?

Can you love yourself at your better, best, worst?
Can you love yourself from last to first?
Would you give away the shirt on your back?
When the time is right, would you ask for it back?

Or better yet, share, it being neither yours nor hers?
Come along, just see, do you think all this will hurt?

No, we are not children, those days are gone
We are all grown up, and trying to be strong
Trying to spare our children the suffering we were given
Trying to pass on the life lessons we have lived.

Children are not ours, we are theirs
Only if we give them the earth, will they in turn pass it on

But what is left for us?
A smile here, a wink there, a good meal, the
satisfaction of having done the right thing,
and conversation, conversation, conversation

a lover's touch,
of that, let us not say too much

Isn't there, after all, a wisdom in aging?

Dan

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