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Flaming Youth

I am a youthful mariner
And nearly ninety-three,
My father is Methusaleh
Or so it seems to me.
He's just received his pension
But mine's not in the post:
Condemned to hunt the albatross
I sail around the coast.
There was time when I'd retire
When merely sixty-five
Provided I could prove to you
That I was still alive:
My beard would be half-matted,
My mouth a mass of drool,
But sixty-five is now the age
When I completed school.
At twenty-one they licensed me
To ride in pedal cars;
At forty-five, I learned to spell,
And also my three Rs.
At seventy, a juvenile,
I started downing booze,
And hung around the precincts,
Flashing my tattoos.
At eighty I was married,
And gained a job. The truth
Is that I can't remember
My hopeless, mis-spent youth.
My grandpa writes some doggerel,
And posts it up each week,
But then of course the fellow is
A venerable antique.
Millennia mean nothing.
A century's not clever.
I am a youthful mariner
Condemned to sail forever.

Read the Guardian story about life expectancy here

Read Bill's 'Bill Posters' blog by clicking here

Flaming Youth
It was reported that half the babies born this year in Britain were likely to live to a hundred years old.
7 October 2009

POETRY KIT WEBRING

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