anna asked me if i wanted some macabre info.  i said, yes.  she said, according to this [she must've been consulting some actuarial table] you will die at age 90 in 2057.  that's pretty generous.  i'm surprised i've made it to my mid 50s.  & for you young folks out there who might be reading this let me add to what all your older relatives said about the passage of life.  it goes so fucking fast.  for sure, i started this blog in '04 when i was a relatively spry 37 year old poet.  i am now fiftyfuckingfour.  yes, those years traveled faster than the speed of light.  but as for my age & date of my death.  i don't worry or think about it.  i would like to see our civilization at the end of this century & the beginning of the 22nd C.  ain't gonna happen.  i'll be lucky to see the middle of this new century.  & yet, i am not one to be depressed by my death.  it happens to all of us even if we might harbor the lie that somehow we are the one to escape death & live forever.  i am grateful for life.  i am grateful to be a sentient being in a relatively prosperous age.  the miracles of technology are not to be poo-pooed.  yes, these marvels of innovation are used for evil purposes.  but they are also forces for good.  i shit you not.  & just step back a little to look at the broader landscape.  you might find that life is a little better than it was even 20 years ago.  but i dunno.  i am not cassandra.  i am not an oracle.  i think, as rene char said about the poet, 'he bursts the bonds of what he touches.  he does not teach the end of bonds.'  take that for what you will.  i feel a relatively spry 54.  & yet i know i am growing older.  even on zoom meetings i wonder who that old man with the resting bitch face is in the rectangle with my name.  will i make it to 90?  i hope so.  i want to see how nick becomes a human being.  i want to know his own family.  but i want to make that journey only if anna is with me.  for she is the force that drives the green fuse thru the flower.  for me, every created thing is poetry.  as robert frost said, poetry is a condition of living; not an occupation.  but hell, should i not live to 90 what of it.  i aim for quality over quantity.  this is the only life i know.  there won't be another one.  & in this life i have been given an intellect & tools & language.  holy fucking shit.  how lucky is that.