Age can never advise Youth. 

Not really. 

Age can make tentative suggestions. 

Slide them  

across a dining table, 

a plate filled with assorted wise slices,  

dainty quip biscuits, 

even piecemeal sandwiches  

both wholemeal  

and plain-package-white 

but Age cannot make Youth partake,  

play nice.

.

Age can regale  

Youth 

with sage verbosity,  

anecdotal evidence clipped 

from life's newspaper experiences 

hoarded, much faded,  

distorted 

but lovingly re/stored, brought forth mothballed 

from scrapbook corners  

as Testimonial Truth!!  

OUR    OWN  

Experiences of Youth (cue triumphal trumpets) 

but Age cannot make 

Youth Hear/See,  

draw help from  

p         p---------------------------------------------------------arallels never meet

a        a----------------------------------------------------------nd parables are rarely so

r         r 

a        a  

l         b 

l         l 

e        e 

l         s 

when their entire being is unseemly screaming:  

                                                                                BORING! 

                                                                                BULLSHIT! 

                                                                                IRRELEVANT! 

thumbs shoved deep in denial-ing ears  

and eight fingers shuttering 

resistant bo-peepers.

.

I have written this  

too late

and there will be those who will rightly blame me 

saying: Why could you not have done so 

more timely,  

put a stop to it 

but those who say so  

will not have Seen themselves, 

are not Hearing now 

and perhaps may never understand.

.

                                I am not a tame cat 

                                nor an automaton.

.

Oh, my dear, 

dear child. 

If only you could see  

as I do. 

That the beauty in your fragile self 

has nothing whatsoever  

to do  

with that accident of procreation 

that mad gene shuffle-deck-dealing 

that makes one  

tallshortblueyedbrownsveltestockyvoluptuous  

or not. 

I am not cursing you  

with malformation, illness or accident 

or even the particular 'horrors' of Age: various-varicose-symptoms 

I am not jealous  

or embittered  

or even so unlovely myself 

that I play the game of disparaging         THAT 

which I can never attain.

.

No, 

my dear.

.

There is no harm in being a beautiful, beautiful girl  

but a great, great deal in believing that that is all of yourself you have to offer everyone else.

ALL  

        that is deemed  

worthy.