Sunday, July 02, 2006

The Saturday Poem

Found this in yesterday's paper. Again, I wish I'd written it.

-a

Now and Then

"Now that I'm fifty-seven",
My mother used to say,
"Why should I waste a minute?
Why should I waste a day

Doing the things I ought to
Simply because I should?
Now that I'm fifty-seven
I'm done with that for good."

But now and then I'd catch her
Trapped in some thankless chore
Just as she might have been at
Fifty-three or fifty-four

And I would say to her
(And I have to bite my tongue)
That if you mean to learn a skill
It's well worth starting young

And so, to make sure I'm in time
For fifty, I've begun
To do exactly as I please
Now that I'm thirty-one.

-Sophie Hannah

4 comments:

Houseowner said...

yes, me too, i wish i had written it.
btw, too early to be up and about today,eh? sunday et al...

cheers!
r

The Inquisitive Akka said...

Our poor moms, I guess our generation is a little more fortunate.
I think though that its never too late to start something new. All this talk of not being able to teach old dogs new tricks should be pooh poohed! There are so many thathas and pattis out there who do such exciting stuff! :)

The Kid said...

I am writing this after seeing that jikku.blogspot.com has been put to sleep by Ammani. I suddenly found that the previous posts are still cached in the server...

Me first to get here! :)
-Pratap

AMODINI said...

I loved this poem so much so, that I dug up a few others by S. Hannah and blogged about them.