Happy Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday (to me)

The sun that shone and opened up today

reminds me of cold fate’s unceasing shore.

I see her many suns have had their sway

as now my skin sags low at eighty-four.

My birthday card now comes from stranger’s hands

as day revolves to night and time still thrives;

as those who loved me flown from life’s demands

now seek to make my candles eighty-five.

Still, happiness is candles flickering 

the sun that peeps through blinds in early morn

and all the bright lights on my cake I proudly sing

before the dark of eighty-five is born.

Oh, happy to survive our human fate

than travel through strange worlds anddarker gate.

(photo: me about 1970, Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I place the same poem here, as last year.  I must only change the lines and rhymes where my age changes.)