but it wasn’t at all …

everyone kept saying
they thought I was forty.

“I feel like thirty, but I’ll take it,”
is what I said.

Funny how we count
the chronological years
we’ve lived on the planet
but pay so little attention to

how we live …

well, most of us anyway.

I’ve been guilty of it.
Just muddling through day to day,
waiting on things to change

when I should be changing them myself.

And now,
as another birthday approaches
this one seems much more disquieting.

Fifty five

Although I still look ten years younger,
inside I don’t feel thirty any more;
I just feel it’s time to
change my world

even if it just means
I stop counting birthdays
and start counting

contributions.