She sits on the rocks in a demure bikini, smiling up at me from half a century ago. Her smile says: it is good to be 19, the whole future an endless vista, and the ferocious vigor that makes up first love. A sudden epiphany. I am transported back to that sliver of time. A lifetime evaporates. Not memory, but real Being. I feel everything that was, as if I am right there again and no time has passed.

Death dropped by last night. I never expect him, but he was lonely and I was available. What’s up, I asked. Same old shit, he said. You have no idea how hard this job is. Absolutely no one wants to see me. Ever. Must be lonely. Lonely, he said, you…

He was six days home from war when she knocked on his door. He had been contemplating suicide. Sworn to secrecy by law and strange spooks with dead eyes, he couldn’t tell her that. Whatever wounds he had suffered were his to bear alone and would be for many years…

Poetry, like sex, momentarily destroys the misery of the world. Like an exquisite orgasm, for an instant, you disappear into it, released from the mundane now.

What’s up Doc? When you are living your normal boring life, you don’t seem to notice how the time flies by. While awaiting a diagnosis, amazing how it slows. Even your threatened breath moderates. Light days grow darker. It takes longer to go and longer to get back. Each morning a surprise. The calendar stutters and forgets to advance, but clocks circle faster. You want to know and you don’t want to know.

Tempus destruit spes nostras. Become an archeologist. Master Greek and Latin. Build my own cabin. Apologize to all those I’ve loved and harmed. Read all the books. All. Win the Cross-fit games. Figure out what women want and whisper the secret to Freud in his grave so he can finally get some rest. Learn to juggle. Really. Write just one, perfect poem. Forget that unwelcome war, at least the bad parts. Be stalked by a cassowary. Converse with an Alien. Ever make it to India. Hug my unborn grand-children. Defile Richard Nixon’s grave. Travel to outer space and manage to get home again. Waltz with a Duchess in Vienna. Achieve Satori, then lose it.

praeteritum est praesens The scars of a lifetime describe the essence of whom we have been. Life devolves to what is lost. Eschew slogans; admit the inevitable. Time does not read self-help books, nor care about your positive thinking. And 70 is not the new 35. Ghostly images crowd your head, reduced to evocative reminders: faded shades: lovers, people, homes, places, things you owned, impalpable but in recollection.

In America, a license and car represent freedom. That’s why young people can’t wait to get them and older people fear losing them. I used to be a fearless driver. If I wanted to go, I just went: night or day, whatever weather, just a map (before GPS), little thought…

History rarely repeats itself in the details, but sometimes events are amazingly parallel. Such is the case with the debacle currently ending in Afghanistan. In 1955, we began to equip and train an army (and even an air force) to defend itself against “communist aggression.” Because our “poor little ally”…