By twenty I’d be a poet.
By thirty, a novelist.
By forty, a memoirist.

 

Perhaps a decade anon
I’d expire telling stories
By a babbling brook
With a smoldering fire
And a jug of wine.

 

At thirty nine I took inventory.
The workbench was sow backed
But the warehouse was bare…

(Source: “Mission Reboot”, 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed)

This is an excerpt from one of the earliest poems in this quirky cycle. It hints at the despair I’m struggling to overcome as I approach my fortieth birthday. No pity, folks. I will overcome! :)