Friday, November 14, 2014

A Delicate Balance




The plague takes many forms—a brassy lush,
   A daughter’s failure at the marriage game,
A wife who has to rouge her face to blush,
   A dead son who’s little more than a name,
And your best friends, blasé and terrified,
   Who only have to ask and you obey,
For in a world where love is petrified,
   The rights they have give them the right to stay.
And when the scale of what the years have lost
   Has overwhelmed you, and the scales you hold
Tip down to guilt, and you must face the cost
   Of that hard-fought retreat called getting old,
      You toss the verdict out and share the crime,
      Off-balance for the first and final time.

 

Copyright 2014 Matthew J Wells

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