Messed Up Priorities Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

When one is much younger.
Easy it is,
To have messed up priorities.
With them confused and removed,
As important.
From one's top ten list.
Not to realize this.

Why does it take aging.
As a requirement to appreciate,
What life offers to experience.
With more excitement,
Than going through one's own youth.
Until one tires of hitting walls of brick.
That splits open one's thick head.
To finally see,
Life has its steps to take.
In a process done to do.
With tests to pass.
As lessons continue.
To seem to not end.

Only when one begins to ripen.
Wisened on that vine of life.
Becoming fine as a tasty wine.
Does one find what it is to prioritize.
And how life to live it feeling blessed.
Gets easier to leave behind,
The pettiness.
And what is messed up left alone.
To accept that which is real.
With refusing to stay deluded.
And denying truth to disbelieve it.

When one ages in stages,
With this done to realize.
Reality to accept,
Clears up eyes once fantasized.