Senile Woes Poem by Venkateswaran Krishnan Sreenivasan

Your world is shrinking, your mind expands
Your days are dragging with few demands
Your nights are dreadful with broken sleep
You dwell in your past with nothing to reap

Your taste buds are decayed or totally dead
Even savory food tastes like clay or mud
Your vision is hazy with AMD
And hearing impaired despite the aid

Fragmented sleep at night snoring and waking
For frequent visits to the toilet with bladder leaking
Seized by daytime sleepiness and napping
Make you a dullard who needs propping

The decrepit body with balding and graying
Totally edentulous and mouth gaping
The old man walks with a stick leaning
Yet leaves not the bundle of desires surging

Books you found pleasing to read in youth
Are boring and taxing, they no longer soothe
Grandchildren’s frolics are no more a fun
The race against time is hardly won

Wandering thoughts, slurring speech
And sluggish walk; old age has a lot to teach
The able bodied youths who prefer to preach
Precepts and practices few can reach