Eighty Days Sixty

And already life feels younger,
Most impossible of all things,
Most incredible delusion,

The old man chuckled, telling you,
Who hadn’t the heart to tell him
He’d actually said it backwards,

Being now sixty days eighty.
Or had he intended that slip?
He looked pretty pleased with himself,

And you recalled the anecdote
Of the uncle who at age 12
Thought it was funny to reverse

The candle numbers on his cake
To 21. Supposedly.