SENIORS OLYMPICS Options

[Alan]

SENIORS OLYMPICS

Images of fearsomely fit youth everywhere,
healthy people, all bronzed, featured
by the second, on screens and public spaces :
fit and flash, but always young, Olympians.

I protest ! We seniors are just as sporty;
recycling daily, forever running noses;
fallen archery’s no problem at all - well, it is -
as we routinely wrestle with living.

Best not to even mention water sports.
Weightlifting self out of armchair is hourly,
when diving for the loo, as is rowing back
from much too easily expressed criticism.

We ping pong daily with potions and pills.
Sailing close to the wind, shooting mouth off,
leads to embarrassed synchronized grinning.
Annoy us and you will get a right kayaking.

Much of our lives consists of sundry hurdles;
shops are like a cross-country marathon,
or a steeplechase broken into relays,
bench to leaned-on wall, to bench again.

And, we’ve all done pent- and heptathlon,
with the dec- coming in to (or out of) focus,
we need not 'discus' these ageist Olympics,
I have hammered my point enough ....

Alan McAlpine Douglas

[Larry]

Hi Alan,

Nicely put. You're on the right track. I'd like to see how fast these young whipper-snappers could get out of their collective blocks with bad knees, sore backs, aching feet and also being too hard of hearing to react to the starting gun.

We will still have our "Try-athalon" and as the old adage goes: "I'm not as good as I once was but I'm as good once as I ever was."

Larry

[Alan]

Dear Larry,

My goodness, how many word plays I missed that you have added !

Thank you.

Love
Alan