David

When he was in his teens he lined up

his money in columns

and on his bedside table

to keep him warm at night.

At twenty he strode around

the globe keeping his feet

firmly on the ground and

his eyes fixed on the future.

And at thirty he turned to study

stately homes and old gravestones,

the archaeology 

of penury and wealth.

Forty felled him with passion:

he threw order out the window

drowned in bed and said

in that moment he was happy.

But fifty found him

meditating on the stream,

on the fluid transience

of loss and permanence.

So sixty saw him in the garden

cultivating roses and

reflecting on the delicacy of life,

its beauty and its thorns.

Seventy was sweet: the body

stumbled a little but beer

was good and the food

they cooked tasted of love.

Eighty was a slow decade

spent contemplating death

and curating peace

in the storehouse of his soul.

At ninety he recalled

he had once been a child

so invited himself to parties

and was rowdy.