we’re older

“All trees wither and die in time, But the cypress in Zhaozhou’s yard flourishes forever. Not only does it defy the frost, keeping its integrity; It virtually sings with a clear voice to the light of the moon.” — Zen Master Huanglong Nan

Older age. It’s a thing for me. Like the Red Sox, cows, aloneness, and newly-found mountain energy are things. I’m filled with gratitude that I continue to operate – climb those mountains, head out on long walks and pilgrimage looking for something – with original knees and hips. Some of my parts don’t work so well. Most have kept on keeping on. Yeah, my brain mysteriously clicks off every six months or so, but not so much that I can’t figure the basic stuff on the Y’s “Welcome in” computers. Usually.

When I was married to Susan in Portland, 2018, I wrote a poem titled “Older.” Here’s some of it – “We’re older, my wife and me, and don’t remember things. Not like before. Not like last week. We take turns in our forgetting, though I see, I hear it, more in her. Did she forget these very things only last spring? Spring with all its promises and anticipations and evidences of renewal. Or not? I fear our forgetting makes us less. We shrink and inch away in our now long life to some other place. Some place smaller – I am frightened…Will I forget to check the rearview?…I’ve forgotten twice in just the last week…..”

And yet, here I am, dragging my weary butt up mountains, motorvating down and back up the 101, catching five-mile walks on the Bob Jones Trail, clocking in at my job. Even with the aloneness, my life feels somehow larger. My 76-year-old brain can explain none of it. Like the cypress tree there in Zhaozhou’s yard – it just is.

(Happily, Susan seems to be fine up there in the Rose City.)