the age

it was a long day. busy as fuck. i left the office late and started walking thru midtown. it is 6:00 pm and night had settled over the city. j st was packed with revelers, shoppers, a new ice skating rink tucked on the street between my favorite newstand, the newsbeat, a collection of gay clubs, and newish restaurants.

my favorite time of day when the chill in the air and the darkness is illuminated by signage and street cars. i run into my old friend richard hansen. we walk together down j st toward our respective homes and families. we are almost the same age. oldsters now. i tell richard that there is a pleasure in aging. tho my ancient brain couldn't remember what kind of pleasure.

i'm sure of it. i look forward to becoming the old poet. not for wisdom or even the alleged benefits of seniority. i can use an accumulation of experiences for my writing. besides, i'm an autodidact and a slow learner. i need as much time as i can get in order to make more discoveries and experiments.

richard and i laugh like kids. i worry about getting cantankerous as i grow old. it's a cliche, sure, but one grounded in anecdote and personal observation, some people just get so bloody unpleasant as they grow older. is it a lifetime's accumulation of disappointments and the cold relief of reading the papers everyday with its fresh sources of horrors of the world and bad news?

i worry about that, too. i want to cultivate wonder but grounded in the quotidian messes of our lives. no, i don't mind getting old. i was young once. now it's for others to have their turn. they shall be older soon enough too. maybe i need to study more yeats who wrote poems about growing old. perhaps i should not worry over much. perhaps i should at that.