a psalm for the day you are another year older

I am becoming – vintage.
Some might say aging gracefully,
some might say getting on a bit,
whatever euphemism I hear
the cold hard facts are clear:
there’s now less years ahead
than those behind.
And I find
that my mind is troubled

by the relentless rolling of days & weeks
the steady scrolling of months & years
the ticktockticktocktick so quick, 
so quick –
so quick the passing of my allotted span.

A time for everything, and for everything a time?
And mine
feels like its slipping through my fingers.
How I long to linger
in each moment,
hold tight the feelings of now:
l want more! 
More now, more moments, more time…
Time to hold on and not to let go,
even though I know
that retro
doesn’t look so good on me.
For one does not become retro;
one goes retro
(alias – moves backwards),
yet time’s arrow flies the opposite way.

So what if I say,
grow vintage?
grow older
grow mature-r
(sounds like a cheese! who wants to be a cheese?)
…Perhaps like a wine,
the kind that’s fine,
the kind where they say,
.…Mmm! A very good year!
A good harvest,
a good season.

A season…
for everything, and to all things a season –
it’s surely good reasoning.
So I will proudly grow vintage
for grow 
is a verb of life;
a word of hope, of faith, of promise.

I want to be a vintage of good taste
that sparkles in the glasses on the banquet table;
a draught of encouragement:
“Rich with compassion, with a bouquet of kindness, and top notes of common sense and good humour!“
Full of the flavours of grace
in every taste, in every trace
the fruit of the One true vine,
the finest of the fine
discerned in me
as I grow
vintage…
not just older, maturer,
whatever –

-and it may,
one day, be said of me
Now, there was an excellent year.