There is this Young Woman,
a Vendor at store,
Still young at heart,
aged sixty-four.

She Is sixty-four,
if not a day more,
and shuffles her wares
from the oven.

Her husband is dead,
or so thought she’d said,
or some time in life
he’d left her.

An old man, myself,
my memory fails;
in which case,
I just can’t remember.

But, the store keeps her there!
Perhaps, part welfare;
and then again,
why would it matter?

Business is Business!
and the money is funny.
If not in the way,
it really won’t care.

Besides, what is Human,
are really just perks.
The money is funny,
but that’s how it works.

It’s here, the Young Woman
still makes her craft –
cookies from the oven;
some think her daft.

An elderly lady,
still young at heart;
she’d like to retire,
but still has to work.

Her husband, he left her,
chasing some skirt;
or he died, I have tried
to remember which part.

The Business of Business
is Get On With Life!
To be young in the heart
cuts half of the strife.

At well over sixty,
I know what she hungers:
to stay home alone,
vendor no longer.

At well over sixty,
she’s not a year younger,
forgetting the faces
of friends now turned strangers.

But Business is Business!
and this is the danger:
still young at heart,
where everything’s older.

Business is Business!
that’s what I told her.
The minute you quit it,
then everything’s over.

©2014, Marvin Welborn
19 December 2014.