The Tallyman Of Life Poem by Damian Cranney

Age, will not render her less to me,
The memories like fruit are palpable and ripe,
The inner eye unravels all we see,
Separating the real from what is merely hype.

Death or fear of death when years have passed,
No longer haunt, like as it did in youth,
But living death when memory is gone and past,
A stranger to all she loves, is what she dreads in truth.

Her father, as affable as any man I've known,
Suffered from this malady of advancing senility,
Gradually, almost imperceptibly into a child he'd grown,
The helplessness you feel, reveals your own stark inability.

Do not yourself condemn, just be there,
It's all part of the better or the worse,
That you promised you would share,
The tallyman is knocking just open up your purse.