Age

I wonder if visiting an archeological site, say a Roman settlement near present-day Mertola, in Portugal, and finding your jackknife there would make you old. Old needs no help, of course. I worked my scaps the other day and felt like a bird, old bird, proto-pelican. I liked what it did with my voice, but I tell you, the rest was brittle. Things continue that way. A casual swipe of a square inch or two back of my left eyebrow leads to consultation with NASA as to the composition of my noggin. I'm called "you old fuck" during a parking lot episode. In Lisbon about two months ago a young man on a tram offers me his seat. (Here I'll remember that a crowded tram in Lisbon leaves you hanging from forces of nature beginning with, but not limited to, hump, swivel, bend, press and hundred-year-old wooden box with windows.)
Eyes that require
their own staff and budget
(but don't they see past the bridge?)
is how an idea like this carries on. And I'm not feeling old today!
I did point out to my daughter the other day, though, that "we're all pushing 80."

In My Room

Not to go on about old songs, but the Beach Boys are doing it right now, singing "In My Room" at my desk while I look out across the Courthouse. In either case a fortress is built, as adolescent boys know how to build them.
Here I am, thinking this way.
I don't know details but Brian Wilson got heavy into himself, I think, and the group broke down. I'll use sublime for some of their songs, though. "In My Room" can take a lot of abuse--sentimental pap, lyrics that beg for satiric intervention, squarest possible harmonies--but every fourteen years or so I find it again.
Look at the workers streaming home through the sunlight, 4:49.

Three Days After Canada Day

Three days later much had changed. Just occasional waves reached the bike path nearest the bandstand. They looked thin, doomed.
The bandstand could've played through it all. I attended a love-in there in about 1969, played concerts with the Lions Band. Trombone. When horns were required by progressive rockers, the time of Lighthouse and Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears, I covered the 'bone chart for Kharma, a band that lasted not much longer than three or four gigs around Regina, the last at the bandstand on a Saturday afternoon.

For the lake to achieve even that much overflow today the lake needs wind. Those two have been at it for a hundred and thirty-some years.

I heard the fireworks on Canada Day, saw people walking there with blankets.
It's a day bracing and fair.