An Old Story (Limerick)

An Old Story (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

If you’d like to feel old, here’s a way–
Besides all those aches and that gray–
Arrive home, and then hear
From your husband, “My dear,
Your Medicare card came today.”

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One Response to “An Old Story (Limerick)”

  1. Elisson says:

    Time Marches On
    or
    It Sure Beats the Alternative

    It’s hell, they say, when you get old.
    Your toenails all are caked with mold,
    Or maybe other kinds of fungus.
    It’s hard to breathe with ancient lungus.
    All bloodshot are your rheumy eyes,
    All weak and stringy are your thighs.
    Your pancreas is stiff and sore,
    And buttocks droop towards the floor.
    With exercise, your muscles ache,
    It feels like all your bones will break.
    You day by day get soft and flabby,
    Your disposition loutish, crabby.
    Digestion, once a simple task,
    Becomes a chore (and please, don’t ask.)
    Shoulder joints all get bursitis.
    Your bladder wakes you up at nightis.
    Your backbone gives you many pains.
    Increasingly sieve-like grow your brains,
    Until you cannot keep in mind
    that “this is your elbow, that’s your behind”:
    Getting old, it is not kind.

    But whene’er these thoughts go thro’ my head,
    I think: “It sure beats being dead.”