This body
- on the whole -
still functions amazingly well,
allowing fifty, yes, seventy
kilometers
of bicycle training
each day,
plus hilarious scree climbs,
though it still shows signs
of times to come,
when it will either slowly decline,
or fall short of everything
in one quick blow

It's inevitable, natural,
and in some distant way... relieving!

It is this notion
that keeps me lingering
beneath the blanket
in our Great Ship Of Dreams,
hours after waking up in the morning,
in the image of a chrysalis,
warm and tight,
birdsong and a slow rain
talking to me
through the crack I left open
in the balcony door,
my thoughts rising
like wild, independent birds of prey
on the thermals of
”still alive and kicking”
and ”not yet especially dead”,
almost fourteen billion years of evolution
handing me down the chain of command
and up the excitements of what's yet to be

I visualise breakfast
with the knowledge that I can break fast

The white wooden semi-circle of a staircase
brought me up here last night,
and it will bring me back down in a while;
an old man
eagerly anticipating the sights
that the James Webb telescope will bring us,
come July,
at the tip of coincidences and reactions

I suddenly find a new, obvious way
to arrange the book stacks
by the bedside,
making ample space
for the coffee mug,
right here,
at the very edge of evolution,
and I rejoice!