Buying the Farm

A toast to three friends at a party celebrating their fortieth birthdays.

Forty came and forty went
A blink, and half our lives were spent
We never thought of what it meant
When mortgage took the place of rent

We’d no more borrow, we would own
Trade house of straw for house of stone
We’d make a stand and cease to roam
We’d claim a house and make it home

Foundations lent a sense of worth
But shadows dimmed our middled mirth
We had been tending here since birth
A slab of stone, a plot of earth

But I love you, and you, and you
So raise a glass, and then raise two
At forty years, we learn what’s true
We always were just passing through

Cheers!