Young limbs, old(ish) lives

so unroll my memories, like a coiled carpet, stretching back
into a fuzzy past from which bright pictures slide.
There I am, chubby-limbed and rubbery, rolling in the grass of the back yard
and everything is golden, it is before pain entered and
I learnt about regret.
In that bright past I hardly recognize the body that I am now.
How bear the nags and aches, subtle deficiencies
stubbornly hammering my dear but aging corpse.
Trying to fight the many minuses
filling the interstices of time, my days
and certainly my nights are crammed with
the desire to be another body (were that possible)
or that young one that leapt and sprang.
No good, age trundles me into a side room,
though refuse to say the word 'geriatric';
but spirit soars, have learnt mice can be giants,
looked at a certain way. Muscle may wane,
bones crumble, yet there's some compensation in old age:
the slow beneficent soft smile