Turning 40 (2)

I tell myself that forty doesn't matter,
that day will dawn as just another day.
It doesn't mean that all my dreams will shatter.
At forty, living single with a cat or
dog is such a tired old cliché.
Last year, I knew that forty didn't matter.
But first the marriage went, another splatter
in those divorce statistics USA:
There went another dream, a silver shatter.
It's not as if life came on a platter.
Sometimes I was the flesh for it to flay.
The bruises fade and forty doesn't matter.
When I see how everything has scattered
I sometimes fear it might be true to say
That all illusions, just like windows, shatter
and leave you gasping in the cold sleet's clatter,
wondering if you ought to curse or pray.
But still, I'll live like forty doesn't matter,
with new illusions grown from those that shatter.

Photo by Linda Cross
Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Thu, Sep 20, 2001.