Ode to pollen, ragweed, mold spores, and getting old…

Creeping up on my 44^th year of life and the inevitable breakdown of the physical form becomes… well, inevitable. 

I feel it in the tightness of the hips and lower back getting out of bed in the morning. It’s in the creaking and cracking of knee joints whilst squatting to lift up an object. It’s in my failing eye sight that has been, up until a year ago, perfect vision 20/20. It’s in the unavoidable root canal that I’ve been avoiding for the past eight months. The most recent ailment that has befallen me is seasonal allergies, in addition to a general assault on my previously ironclad immune system.

For someone who has always been healthy, strong, hardly ever sick and never been to the hospital ever (except for that one time I had to have my stomach pumped), it’s sobering to realize that the body is on the slippery slope of decline. Exponentially so. To commemorate this officious step away from youthful immortality towards unalterable death, an attempted (silly) foray into composing haiku… (part of the PBS experiment.)

                                                      Weepy, wat'ry eyes

                                           Mucous membrane, snot snot snot

                                                   Phlegm, my best friend is

         O, yonder hip-bone
Lest you jest at my pai-ain

       T’aint funny one bit

                                         Curs-ed are the years 
                                     Cantankerous maladies

                                         I declare, Begone!

                          Ipso facto death

            ‘fore he thee pluck, crooks finger

                            It, I ignoreth

I’m obsessed with the notion that we are (literally) dying just a little bit every day. I may be having a mid-life crisis. More on that later if/when I figure it out.