Time Waits For No Man Poem by Austin Dorrell

Time waits for no man.
I'm all grown up now,
the innocence of adolescence
is gone in a flash.
The elders used to tell me,
'these were my glory days,
make the most of them.'
I didn't listen.
Looking foreward to the
excitement of growing old.
I made me shiver with anxious
anxiety. First I wished for a car,
to be sixteen years old!
To drive aimlessly across town
with no objective, just drive.
Then it was being seventeen.
The 'R' movies in the theater
beckoning me to check the days
til I could enter and watch.
Eighteen was my adulthood,
my freedom. Freedom from parents.
Freedom to drink and stay out late.
Freedom to eat what i wanted, watch
what I wanted, date who I wanted, and
be who I wanted.
Awe... yes I wished for that day. The day
to turn sixteen, then I couldn't wait for
seventeen, and shortly after i acheived
that goal, it was eighteen.
Always looking foreward, always seeing
the better as being an arm stretch away.
I wished my life away one year at a time.
I didn't think about it. Just couldn't wait to
have the next stage in life. wished each day
would hurry up and end.
Now i'm nineteen soon to be twenty. Full
time job- full time school. What i wouldn't
give to be fifteen again. Waiting for that car.
Or seventeen and still a kid, not a
'responible' adult. For years I wished my life
away, little by little. Now I'm wishing my life back.
However, nothing happens now. I cannot count
down til fifteen again, wishing it would not
keep me any longer. Cannot have my first car, first
girl, buy my first cigar. Time only laughs at my
request to turn back. Only you older than I know how
it will feel at twenty one, thirty, or even fourty and over
the hill. I do not have much advice to give, I'm only ninteen.
But to you who are fifteen, stay that way as long as you can.
Wishing your life away does nothing but make you old sooner
and miss the glory in the place in life you are now. Every
phase of life has its purpose, its joys, its sorrows.
To you who are fourty, do not wish to be twenty, because
tomorrow you are fifty, wishing you are fourty. Just enjoy it
while you can,
time waits for no man.