Here and Gone

Monday

Brilliantly emerald weeds add to the general exuberance of an exploding season.

• Spring now launches into a period of wild bursts of activity.  Flowers suddenly blossom, hang around for a while hopefully awaiting early insects, then fade and vanish.  Overnight any tree can transform from bare brown to nearly full green.  A brilliant afternoon can suddenly turn viciously grey cold and rainy, or vice versa.  People learn to dress for anything and to expect the unexpected.
• Naturally, such times recall old memories.  Some things are gone forever.  We had a large cherry tree that right about now would send showers of pink blossoms on every breeze, a fantasy scene.  Alas, it came down in a storm some years ago.  An old apple tree in our backyard has been missing for decades, and yet I still remember it blooming, with bees everywhere.
• I try sometimes to meditate calmly and remember distant places and times, often anchored by the season in which I am located.  I do not dwell on summers or winters while April surrounds me, but rather concentrate on other Aprils elsewhere and elsewhen.  Usually, I fail.  Memory preserves only the most exceptional events in our lives.  Spring and April just flow by, creating gentle but fuzzy recollections.
• So I do my best to appreciate April now.  That is what I have.  And that is an awful lot.  And I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to watch this season through its normal course, even if I will have forgotten most of it next year. 

Tuesday

Cherry blossoms overlooking harbor; not exactly Japan but Hokusai would appreciate the motif.

• April showers are generally more appreciated in nursery rhymes than in real life.  A quick drip or two is dandy, but weeks of constant clouds racing by, a few delivering moisture, can be quite depressing.  Always expecting rain can also complicate apparel choices and what we carry with us on walks.
• Of course, this is a hermetically sealed age, and I suppose I am more aware of meteorology than anyone except farmers and fishermen.  A retiree tends to focus on such things, having time to look out the window and the freedom to decide what to do today based on what is seen.  When I was working it was simply a dash from house to car to office and back,  the only notice of weather being in how it affected traffic.
• I find it an exercise in contrast.  A brilliant sunny day around here is all the more exceptional for not being a dark rainy one.  A dark rainy day can sometimes even be a relief from enforced sunshine.  At least, I can try to make that my attitude, and I often succeed.    

Wednesday

Tulips require a farmer’s foresight and optimism; planting bulbs months and seasons before any results.

• Where are the snows of yesteryear?
• Gone into forever with the blooms of last spring. 

Thursday

Finally our Cinderella landscape is getting dressed for the ball.

• Our minds are so constituted as to embed important patterns that let us make sense of our world.  Once a pattern is in place, we tend to ignore the particulars.  A tree is just a tree, a cloud is just a cloud.  I may enjoy watching a robin, a blue jay, or a cardinal outside my window, but I have no overlays of such birds in other times and places, not even from last year.  I surely know what a robin, cardinal, or jay look like, but it is a single composite picture, not a series of snapshots from the past.
• I contrast that with unusual sights seared into memory.  A bald eagle flying along route 17 one year, buzzards at a park in Florida another, hawks swooping below us at Letchworth state park.  These I may never see again, but they remain somehow vivid. 
• And so it is with many things.  That is why travel is supposed to broaden the mind by filling it with the strange and new and out-of-pattern, so that we come home with enriched imaginations and enhanced perceptions.  Sensory and mental tools sharpened, we are prepared to pay more attention to local experiences that we previously took for granted.
• Growing older, of course, is a constant evolution of mental fog.  We claim to remember some things well, especially from childhood and adolescence, but the fact is we have a lot of trouble saying what we did any given day last week.  Probably part of that is we now have had so many days to recall, but a bit of it is sheer neuronic decline.  The flip side of that _ a bonus if we treat it correctly _ is that any view of a cardinal, robin, or jay can be a delicious and astounding event that we can enjoy as if it were the first time.

Friday

Overhead canopy unfolds in a variety of pastel brilliances.

• Huntington tulips are not invasive and never naturalize.  It is possible to see entire hillsides covered with daffodils lasting for centuries, or to come upon untended crocus patches in secret forest glens.  Tulips require care, and replenishment, and human intervention.  But they are so beautiful that everyone plants them anyway, year after year.
• They do cause problems for towns and sites that advertise their “tulip festivals.”   In Holland, blooms last a while in relatively predictable weather.  Here, blooms may come and go in a day or two if the weather is too hot, may never happen if the ground is too dry, may open brilliantly only to be destroyed by a sudden harsh rain.  And the timing is never certain, even when varieties are planted together to hopefully give an extended bloom.
• There is probably a life lesson in tulips.  Fortunately, for me right now, the sheer esthetic pleasure of viewing them overwhelms such arid intellectual thoughts. 

Saturday

Lonely cherry tree blossoms profusely in the parking lot at a local harbor deli, mostly ignored by hungry passers-by.

“Larry, Larry, hey, what’s new?” Anthony glides slowly onto the sand next to his friend.

“Hey Tony, yourself.  Nothing much.  Holding the fort.”

“Where’s the gang?” asks the great grey gull loudly, as usual.

“Here and gone, mostly gone.  Bob and Tina said they were tired of the local food options, she couldn’t stand raw clams anymore, they flew down to the city a while ago.”

“Boy, they should have checked out the south shore.  You would not believe what you can get at some of the ocean beaches if you hit the right day ….”

“And Patsy, Heather, some of their friends _ young crowd you know _ into the city too.  More excitement, easier pickings, tired of the same old fare.”

“Who can explain this younger generation,” grunts Anthony.  “But what about Mark, Bob, Marsha?  Nothing but dynamite would make them move.”

“Gone, just gone, I’m afraid,” responds Larry.  “The winter was going so well, even for them at their age, but then that last unexpected ice storm just hit too hard.”

“Ah, ah.  Life goes on, I suppose,” Anthony sighs.  “Well, good to see you here at least.”  He glances at the long stretch of empty beach.  “Sure not like the old days.”

“Nothing is.  Nothing is.”  They squawk a while longer, then wing out over the whitecapped waves.

Sunday

Wind-ripped pink blossoms

Innumerably strange

Float

Evoke ancient dreams

Rejoys

Monday

Almost unnoticed, pines also begin annual renewals of leaves and cones.

• A few days of much above average temperatures and a return to “normal” temperatures have transformed outdoors immensely.  Bushes are in full bloom or well on their way, yellow patches sparkle on newly verdant lawns and roadsides.  Birds are in full throat, even managing to occasionally drown out the leaf-blowers and lawn-mowers also just out of hibernation.  People smile, children jump about happily, and all the world is an optimistic place.
• Some would wish to be nothing more than logic.  Cybernicists dream of pouring themselves into cold silicon and living forever as frozen circuits.  Spring days are a reminder that we are not mostly logic, but rather emotions and senses and memories and flesh and blood and none of that translates to transistors.  We should glory in being who we are, which is more than we can possibly imagine, in an infinite world still perfectly suited to our needs.

Tuesday

Early boat traffic is now constant, but most docks remain winter empty.

• Robins are everywhere, hopping about the lawn, seeming to listen intently, pecking away.  Supposedly they search for worms, even in frozen ground when they arrive a bit too early.  That hardly explains their journey across vast asphalt driveways with the same rhythm.  So concentrated on their task that they often ignore people until someone is right on top of them.  A wonderful mark of returning spring, a certain sign that real winter has ended.
• Once upon a time I would have tried to see if my conventional wisdoms are true.   What do robins really eat, where do they overwinter?  Now that my curiosity is aroused, I may even take a few seconds to look up the facts.  But lately my pleasure in noticing such things is not particularly enhanced by knowing more.  I am content to watch and enjoy and simply rejoice that there are still wild birds with mysteries (at least to me) in the world. 

Wednesday

Two confused ospreys, after their nest was cleared off a boat by the owner.

• Biblically, this is the day the lord has made, ee cummings called it the sun’s birthday.
• Each day is the present day, the feast day, the important day, and the only real day we experience.

Thursday

Hills change hue day by day, almost hour by hour, as sap rushes about frantically waking things up.

• In conventional jargon,  spring in Huntington has reached a tipping point.  It is possible to imagine a late blizzard or freeze, but events like that are nearly in the category of imagining nuclear war.  Under normal circumstances _ another cliché _ flowers and leaves are so far advanced that there is no going back.
• Only humans can even conceive of things like points, concepts like going forward or going back.  A “tipping point” is a convenience with no actual existence, like the imaginary square root of minus one (minus one itself being another such concept.)  The world just rolls on as it will, changing as it must, becoming whatever it will become, no matter what we think.
• Of course we worry, especially at our own actions.  I am amazed there are still so many birds, still insects, that I can still breath the air.  Humans have ruined so much, and do so at an increasing pace, and it is all too easy to understand other concepts like a “silent spring.”
• We are stuffed with concepts, and perhaps like statistics, too many concepts and facts dull us to specific instance.  A million birds dying somewhere does not affect us as much as one blue jay wounded by a cat in the back yard.   That intellectual gap, unfortunately, may be what destroys us and our civilization. 
• Then whatever comes next, if anything, can invent their own concepts and document the tipping point that drove us into our own extinction. 

Friday

Maple flowers adding to high sneezable pollen invisible in clear cool air.

• Often maple trees have begun their stately progression to full foliage by late February.  After all, in much of New England the syrup season ends in mid-March, as the sap changes its nutrient levels to accommodate flowers and leaves.  By April, florets usually hang thickly on trees, providing a reddish or greenish tinge to the horizon and surprising those who examine nearby overhead branches closely.
• Not this year.  Even mid-April, the twigs are mostly bare and brown.  There are a few indications of growth here and there, but it requires a close inspection to notice.  Trees are overwhelmed, for once, by the actions nearer the ground.  The surprising and varied patterns of seasonal cycles are one of the joys of having the leisure to appreciate them.  I admit that in my working days, I was usually more concerned with getting somewhere than with looking around where I was.  Today, I try to remember what I saw anew each day, and be constantly amazed at the wealth surrounding me.

Saturday

Busy robin munches away at something, or maybe just gathering for a nest.  It wouldn’t answer my questions.

“Hey Sophia!” yells Brandon, racing across the playground towards another ten-year-old on the jungle gym.  “Did you see that huge bird over us a minute ago?”

“Sure did.  What a monster.  I wonder what it was?”

“My mom says it’s an osprey _ it builds huge nests out of sticks and eats fish.”

“Raw fish?  Yuck.”

“Well, if you like them you like them.  We have sushi sometimes …”

“I don’t even like fish cooked,” notes Sophia authoritatively.

“My mom says an osprey is a kind of eagle.”

“Oh,” muses Sophia.  “Dad showed us an old painting and told baby Carl that eagles carry away bad little boys.”

“Cool!  Wouldn’t it be fun to be a bird, nothing to do all day, float around and look down at everything?”

“And if anybody bothers you,” she sticks out her tongue at Brandon, “you can just fly away.”

Sunday

All day fog settles in again, preserving daffodils and tulips in cool mist.

I am

No mover, shaker, one percent

Not three percent nor five

As rich and poor as anyone

Who knows they are alive

April’s Full

Monday

Lovely porch to view opening forsythia if you’re wearing a parka.

• Having become certain that I understand the new destructive patterns of the world more completely, it has been refreshing to be reminded that surprises continue.  After long spells of drought, higher than normal temperatures, calamities predicted, there have occurred months of low temperatures, snow, rain, and gloom.  An unexpected normal,  at least for what used to be considered normal.
• I believe climate is changing ferociously, and industrial activity is at fault.  I do not believe it will wipe out all the species on the planet (we are doing that quite well on our own.)  Humans will cope, as they always have, as they did through surprisingly swift and devastating climactic changes over the last two thousand years.
• The oceans may be a different story, as they continue to absorb immense quantities of CO2 and limit the damage we perceive.  As for the rest …
• I don’t know.  I have today, and the last few months, and it has been unusually chilled and my old bones do not appreciate that as they should.  In any case, I remain unsure of my predictions, after being been corrected so thoroughly by natural reality.

Tuesday

If it were only rare and hard to grow, this would probably be a prized specimen.

• Dandelions prove reliable indicators of spring.  Sometimes they bloom late into the fall, but I’ve never seen one in February or earliest March.  The first is a welcome sight, popping up on dirt tracks or unmown lawns, bright yellow amidst otherwise pale hues.  And then they just keep blooming and blooming and blooming.  Each individual flower is marvelous, each fluffy seed head dreamlike.
• Around here they’re regarded as pests.  Much money is spent keeping them at bay chemically on lawns, and nobody dares or cares to make dandelion wine, which I’ve heard is not as excellent as its name.  I admit that after a few months they fade from notice in my own mind, and I pay little attention to them until fall again marks their prominence.  Their very abundance detracts from their appreciation _ a lot like water.

Wednesday

Resembling the three graces, swans in cold water, warm air, bright sun, winter landscape.

• Like a watched pot of boiling water, spring lawns never seem to be growing until they are suddenly deep, ragged, and bushy

Thursday

Natural abstraction glows in early afternoon, with full multimedia provided by birds.

• Our minds are filled with symbolic archetypes such as a tree represented by a green ball on top of a brown stick.  “Spring” recalls a single perfect day with birds singing and daffodils blooming and us lying happily in green grass feeling a somewhat chill breeze in pleasantly warm sunshine.  Perhaps another day of gentle rain flicking off brilliant pink azaleas.
• But spring is a whole season, filled with events great and small, usually running out of synchronization with our calendar beliefs.  My mind has it laid out as a formal ballet, beginning sometime in late February, like Tchaikovsky’s dance of the flowers _ a progression of floral displays, average temperatures progressing, leaves unfolding on trees.  A calm and orderly three months.
• Last year, I seem to remember (but I am old and who knows?) it was like that.  This year will be more compressed, running fast-forward for a while as lingering hibernations try to catch up.  I am arrogant enough to even resent that they will force me to adapt to their pace with all my outdoor chores already behind my perfect visions.  On the other hand, at least we are arriving at some fine days at last.  

Friday

One or two days of high heat has been enough to instantly activate pond scum.

• In completely residential areas, the notion of “native,” “wild,” and “introduced” becomes murky and meaningless.  There are no undisturbed soils nearby, no virgin forest, no connected tracts of ancient lands.  Amidst the houses, lawns, and dense road networks,  all uncultivated plants equally eke out a living on marginalized forgotten areas, temporarily open spaces, or overtrodden parks.  So my distinction (applied only to those species which do not need direct human intervention to survive year by year) becomes more one of “weed,” “native,” and “semi-wild.” 
• By that standard I can count roses, forsythia and crocuses as semi-wild.  They escape quite well and thrive in local habitats, even though I suspect that if people were to vanish entirely they might disappear a few centuries thereafter.  But in the meantime, I come across patches of crocuses in secluded forest glens, roses surprising me almost anywhere, and forsythia marking the sites of former estates.   I would like to be considered akin to them, but alas I myself require too much cultivation and ongoing care.

Saturday

Green or red blush haze floating around vines and shrubs resolves to unfolding leaves on closer inspection.

Sitting quietly on a warm April day, listening to the chatter of emerging leaves.

“Ah so tired ah so tired,” drone curling limp exhausted garlic clumps, up for over a month.

“Gushwatchout gush watch out,” sing tiny green ragweed rosettes spreading thickly everywhere.

Briars and wild roses sharply unfold from thorns “Buzz crack saw buzz crack.”

Under it all echoes “swish clang clip swish” from infinite blades of grass posed en garde.

Overhead, trees in various states of exertion “yawn maybe stretch maybe yawn” buds swelling a few beginning to spread.

“At work, stand back, at work, just work” vines along the road magically sprout and fill everything with green.

A reverie only partially fantasy.

Sunday

April March together run

Normal two months less than one

Too fast each morning something new

Flowers, grasses, trees all grew

Too slow when dark clouds shadow hills

Sharp winds strip heat with damp and chill

Nature ignores me and my views

With more important tasks to do

Days or weeks, months as it will

Whatever pace, nothing stands still

I may complain of rain or sun

No matter what, I must have fun.

Remarkable

Monday

Seems a shame, daffodils defiantly spurt into bloom, only to be battered by heavy rain.

• Only a romantic living on the British Isles in the last century could think April is the cruelest month.  For most of history, at least in Western Europe and North America, just about any month would have its share of possible horror and disaster.  Famine, plague, war, crop failure, weather misery.
• Well, we’re temporarily at least beyond all that.  Each day is marvelous.  But still, we manage to worry a lot, mostly that it will all go away.  I don’t know if that is basic human perversity or just a lack of grace in the cultural soul of United States citizens.  
• Fortunately, life usually grabs us by the throat and forces us to exist in the moment.  It’s hard to encounter a bright red cardinal, a newly returned robin, a pair of gamboling squirrels, without breaking into a grin.  Hard to ignore crocuses and daffodils and an explosion of forsythia bushes or puffs of maple flowers high overhead.  Right now, this instant, warm and safe and well fed and happy _ isn’t life fine?
• Well, yes, we admit grudgingly.  But you know …. And off we go into a litany of possible, probable, massive, apocalyptic looming disasters. 
• I stop myself there,  I force myself back to the birds and flowers, back to the sky and water, back to my berries and milk, back to the reality that right now for me this is a great time.  I should make the most of it.  

Tuesday

Nice one day, brutal fog next, again grateful to not be an ancient mariner.

• Water.  Fog, rain, reflections, ripples, breakers, drinks, baths:  infinite lists, infinitely present.  Life itself.  And, underlying all which is obvious each day, the transformations of weather and scenery and well-being,  are magical chemical properties in an astounding atomic structure.  So easy to take for granted, even easier to seize on one aspect or notion.
• Spring in Huntington can be the season of overt rain.  It falls heavily or lightly from mists, mixes into mud, forms sparkling droplets on bare branches.  After days of precipitation, our mood longs for it to go away, but after a long spell of dry cool wind we are grateful for its return.  The most remarkable thing about water is that we usually end accepting it as not remarkable at all.

Wednesday

• April showers bring May flowers.
• But April flowers are more welcomed.

Thursday

Grass is greening but most of the landscape remains February mode at Coindre Hall.

• How remarkable it all is.  Every morning I wake amazed to be alive, to be here, to be me, to have an entire new world to explore.  Infinite things to enjoy, discover, ignore, or complain about.  Bits of pain and hardship to accent joys and comfort.  What a world!  What a life!
• Yet I become as jaded as anyone.  My senses quickly filter all immensity into streams I can accept without overload.  I fail to notice most of the ongoing information.  Sight, sound, touch, scent, taste, internal rhythm _ all of it fades away to be replaced by the pale cast of organized logical thoughts or wandering daydreams.  My mind immerses itself in the swamps of cosmic mysteries contemplated, and leaves all mundane reality behind.
• What a fine thing it is to live in a chaotic, unpredictable universe!  How dull it would be if we really were to inhabit some perfectly controlled environment, a Newtonian nightmare with no surprise nor mystery.  This morning, this day, I am overwhelmed with happiness.
• Yet, already, I fade into a land of desires and begin the cycle of desires anew.

Friday

Some dark rainy days the only available colors are cheerful yellow oil-restriction booms.

• Humans breed plants for varied reasons _ better food, nicer flowers, drought resistance, leaf color or shape, and so on.  Few, however, concentrate on buds.  Like all the intricate miracles of life, buds are all different and all fascinating to stare at, at least for a while.
• The ephemeral nature of buds, of course, makes even the thought of growing a plant for its bud structure a little odd.  Buds are usually even more ephemeral than the flowers or leaves they will eventually produce.  This time of year is truly the season of buds.  We observe them anxiously, awaiting their promise of finer things to come.  I guess they would think it’s good enough to be noticed _ even for a short while _ than to be ignored all the time.

Saturday

No new shoots on reeds, no leaves on trees, boats still high and dry, spring seems later than ever.

“Hey, hi there, handsome!”

Dan perks up on his hind legs, balancing, almost forgetting the seed in his squirrel paws.  “Gosh, hi Suzi!  What a surprise!  You’re looking good.”

“You too, with that big strong full tail ….”

“That’s not all that’s big and strong and full,” barks Dan salaciously.

“Oh, you boys are all the same this time of year,” little coquette Suzi responds.  Suddenly she twists upward.  “Oh, look!  Something strange!  I must dash!”  She runs up the thick trunk behind her.

“Wait Suzi Wait!” Dan scampers after.

“Catch me if you can!”  she flies from a hemlock branch onto a nearby roof and races across.

Dan follows, ignoring danger, finally draws close as she pauses for breath on the limb of a distant hickory.  “Why do you have to be that way?” he pants.

“If you can’t keep up,” laughs Suzi, “I just might go see how Ralph is doing ….”

“Aw, Suzi …”

Day continues bright, cold, clear, spring, endless time for both of them entranced in the instinctual dances of nature.

Sunday

April sings seductive songs, pied piper of the North

Blooms pop, robins hop,

Squirrels play, bulb shoots sway,

Trees’ verdant buds burst forth.

Sunshine streams so bright it seems a crime to stay inside

Rush out to see, immediately

Skin gets cold, joints ache old,

Patience whispers wait, abide.

Seventy Springs

Monday

Fewer and fewer public forgotten woodland scenes remain in Huntington in this era of aerial real-estate treasure hunting.

• I notice that my Monday entries for the last two weeks have been basically identical.  Another sign that short term memory is becoming less clear.  Although, I admit that throughout my life I have had brilliant new ideas that somehow on examination seem to be the same as some great old ideas I once had.
• Accepting limitations on our minds is just another part of aging, no matter what people say.  After twenty or so you cannot run as fast as you once did.  After thirty the muscles begin to weaken a bit, the gut to enlarge.  By sixty the skeleton is chorusing complaints with the various joints, skin is cultivating blemishes, hair is thinning, all the senses are less sharp.  And god knows what is happening inside.
• Speaking of God, it was nice once in a while to accept a Calvinistic or Greek outlook on ambition and achievement  and regard myself as a pawn of fate.  I could relax because I was hostage to situation and genetics.  In the short run I could affect my world, subject of course to luck.  Calvin provides a lovely fatalistic crutch when things go badly, and an equally good dissolver of hubris when things are good.
• Now, of course, ambition and hubris have all melted into the great pot of looming mortality.   As hard to ignore as an iceberg sighted from the bridge of the Titanic.  Thus I am back to where I always was, day by day.  As more and more of my bloated elderly peers make fools of themselves in politics or economics, a decision to exist mostly to remember and appreciate and help others now and then seems completely rational.    

Tuesday

Fog softening shoreline is common in March, but picture doesn’t convey damp chill nor cries of overhead geese.

• Tides are almost the swiftest of the many signs of cycles which are never exact cycles.  Rocks vanish twice a day, reappear, but every grain of sand and each shell has been shifted or broken.  Most of the algae grows or breaks off.  No wave, no sparkle on any wave, ever repeats.
• I have witnessed many cycles, cycles within cycles, cycles that still continue, and cycles that have ended forever.  I remember many springs past, although not so clearly as once, filled with adventure and hope and love and all the many annoyances of life.  Now there appears another _ thankfully.  A new cycle has continued with a grandchild.  But what I most realize, peering back and trying to recall thing honestly, is that what I thought might be permanent has gone forever. 

Wednesday

Reflective tidal pools in constantly renewing marshes harmonize with cold fog and plaintive cries of gulls.

• Act your age.
• Imagine yourself whatever you wish.

Thursday

Wet days bring out the glow of reeds.

• I get a kick out of young men on a Paleolithic diet.  After all, most science shows that our distant ancestors died at forty or younger, worn out by, among other things, their diet.  The most striking thing about culture _ the last forty thousand years of human existence _ is that it has allowed a few people to live well beyond their normal biologic destinies.  Some even claim that our relative longevity evolved to help culture itself survive. 
• So I am well beyond my Paleolithic destiny, but still within a prehistoric cultural norm.  The head Druid could have easily been a septuagenarian who knew all the ancient rites and directed everyone else on what to do.  My only function may be in helping civilization and my family continue, but that is a relevant function.
• One of the difficulties of achieving elder status in some comfort is that I find it easier to pause or even stop than to go.  I should of course be content with my day, but if I don’t struggle a little bit with destiny I risk sinking into a couch and only getting up to find a new bag of snacks. 

Friday

Gloomy cold fog, spring that refuses to say goodbye to winter.

• Sometimes physically, more often virtually, I revisit places I have been.  Some things have remained the same, and spark my memories into greater clarity.  More often so much has changed that I am nearly lost.
• My local wanderings have dulled that transition.  I scarcely remember what Huntington harbor nor the town itself looked like forty years ago.  There are enough vestiges of the ancient remaining to give the illusion of permanence.  But certain picturesque spots have vanished forever, huge houses crown the hills and engulf the plains, immense automobiles speed along highways.  Everywhere there is more signage and less nature.  Even the nature that exists tends to be more manicured, less a spot of wildness than a cultivated garden.
• I don’t claim that is bad or good.  I do know it is different.  All my past is different from today, as yours will be different from tomorrow.  And it is at such times of recognition that I most keenly feel my own years speeding past.

Saturday

No professional photographs, blurred, but the idea is there ….

I turn around after closing the gate to the dock carefully.  Sure enough, there’s a darkly cloaked figure resting nearby.  “Welcome,” he greets me in somber tones.

“Ah, Grimm, I don’t need you this fine morning.  Why don’t you save your visits for the deep of night, as usual?”

“Omnipresent in your thoughts.  Another year gone by.  Another step closer…”

“For seventy years, on the other hand,” I laugh, “it’s been another moment gone by, another bit closer.  What’s so special about now?”

“You must admit the end is nearer, anyway.”

“Not really.  As an adolescent possibilities of nuclear war were just as omnipresent.  And in my twenties I was sure all really good would-be romantic artists died before they were thirty.  Nothing new.”

Grimm is not about to give up easily.  “Quake, mortal.  Fear that false beat in your chest, that minor pain in your arm, that moment of dizziness, that strange queasiness in your bowels.  Signs, portents, forebodings …”

“Tra la,” I mock.  “Eternal dance, I suppose, but I still have this real morning, and you own only the imagined future.  I suppose I could tell you to begone, but honestly, I do not mind the company.  Stick around for a while and watch the gulls.”

He scowls and groans and fades away.  I return to my pleasant untroubled solitude.

Sunday

Andromeda blooming late this year,  heavy fog at noon

Seventy springs have flown the years

Innumerable months, days, hours, moments

Most inevitably forgotten.

Sometimes I think I’ve done everything

Sometimes I strain to do just a little more

Mostly I’m just glad I’m here,

I’ve been there,

Unique in all the universe and time