On Aging

Despising my sluggish youth as a child,

I once wished myself to be fully-grown;

now grown, no longer am I as beguiled

with growing up (as mid-life I bemoan);

experience and wisdom are sublime,

but the salad days of youth eternal

are what makes poems of beauty rhyme;

for age and dotage are universal.

Instead, be in the winter of thy life

with love, for love restores thee like a tonic;

carves out the melancholy like a sharp knife;

and silences the voices demonic.

To age well, live well: so love and be loved;

and bar not the support of thy beloved.

By Ngoc Nguyen

From: United States